Black Hole Flare: Largest and Most Distant Recorded
A powerful flare, co-discovered by the Zwicky Transient Facility, likely originated from a supermassive black hole consuming a massive star. Typically, the universe’s most massive stars explode as supernovae before collapsing into black holes. However, in a rare event, one enormous star never followed this path. Instead, it drifted too close to a gigantic black hole, which tore it apart.
This scenario explains findings published in Nature Astronomy about the most intense and farthest flare ever detected from a supermassive black hole.
Observations and Characteristics
- The cosmic flare was first seen in 2018 by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), funded by the US National Science Foundation and headquartered at Caltech's Palomar Observatory.
- It was also detected by the Caltech-led Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey, also NSF-funded.
- The flare’s brightness increased 40 times within months, reaching a peak luminosity 30 times greater than previously observed black hole flares.
- At its brightest, the event shone with the intensity of 10 trillion suns.
About the Black Hole
The flare originated from a supermassive black hole classified as an active galactic nucleus (AGN), known for its continuous material accumulation. This AGN, named J2245+3743, is estimated to be 500 million times the mass of our Sun and lies 10 billion light-years away.
"That is the most likely explanation... describing the most powerful and most distant flare of energy ever recorded from a supermassive black hole."
This event highlights the extreme phenomena occurring in the distant universe.
Author's summary: A distant supermassive black hole unleashed the brightest flare ever seen, caused by the destruction of a massive star, illuminating cosmic activity billions of light-years away.
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