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.
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.