A supermassive black hole violently gobbled up an enormous star, producing a gargantuan cosmic outburst, according to a new study.
A supermassive black hole violently gobbled up an enormous star, producing a gargantuan cosmic outburst, according to a new study.
The black hole flare, as the phenomenon is known, is thought to be the biggest and most distant ever recorded — it was detected from 10 billion light-years away.
“This is really a one-in-a-million object,” said Matthew Graham, a research professor of astronomy at the California Institute of Technology and the lead author of the study, which was published Tuesday in the journal Nature Astronomy.
And how large a volume did that just sterilize of all potential life?
The universe was only 3 billion years old at the time, and that time period is very anti-life for the universe.
I wonder if any highly intelligent life has experienced a rogue black hole taking out their planet directly getting sucked up, or indirectly with a stirring tour through their star system changing all the orbits enough to kill them.
This is the thing of my nightmares. The movie Don’t Look Up was a cautionary tale of what we can expect if anything that destructive is ever discovered.
Yes, AMA.