A recent study published in the journal Nature Astronomy reveals that astronomers have detected the most powerful explosion ever observed in the universe, known as AT2021lwx. This explosion occurred six billion years ago, when the universe was half its current age. The explosion was first detected in November 2020 and has been monitored by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System over the last 2.5 years.
The research team determined that the explosion was nearly 100 times brighter than all the 100 billion stars in the Milky Way combined. The explosion surpassed the brightness of most supernovae and Tidal Disruption Events, which only last for a couple of months before fading away. Though not the first ever observed tidal disruption event (TDE), AT2021lwx is undoubtedly exceptional in its brightness and duration. The explosion lasted more than three years, while TDEs are typically observed to last just a few months.
What caused such an explosion? The most plausible explanation is that a giant cloud thousands of times greater in size than our sun fell into a black hole, causing the explosion. The cloud is believed to have originated from a dusty ‘doughnut’ typically surrounding black holes. Although the ignition is not clear, some of the cloud may have been disrupted by the collision of galaxies.
The explosion is thought to be caused by a supermassive black hole disrupting a gas or dust cloud, potentially thousands of times larger than our sun, drawing it off course and into the black hole. The luminosity of the event is three times brighter than tidal disruption events, when stars fall into supermassive black holes. Astronomers believe that a giant cloud thousands of times greater in size than the sun fell into a black hole, causing the explosion. The explosion was eight billion light years from Earth.
Researchers remarked that the energy released from the explosion was equivalent to 100 billion suns exploding. They suspect the energy identified was caused by a gas cloud consumed by the black hole of a size of 10 billion solar masses or greater. The team of astronomers who conducted the study hopes to collect more data across different wavelengths of light to learn about the details of the event. Experts hope that more information about such explosions can be gathered using forthcoming facilities such as the Vera Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time.
In conclusion, the discovery of the brightest cosmic explosion yet is an exciting development in the field of astronomy. While the cause of the explosion is not entirely clear, scientists believe that it was caused by a giant cloud of gas falling into a black hole. Insights gathered from this discovery will help scientists learn more about the vast and mysterious universe in which we exist. We can only hope that further cosmic explosions will be observed, leading to deeper revelations about the origins of our universe.
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