Researchers have discovered the brightest and most powerful flare ever seen from a supermassive black hole. Located about 10 billion light-years away, this black hole, called \u201cJ2245+3743,\u201d is estimated to have a mass of around 500 million Suns.<\/p>\n
Around 2018, it suddenly brightened 40-fold and became 30 times brighter than any similar event ever observed. At its peak, the researchers explain, it shone with the power of 10 trillion Suns.<\/p>\n
According to the team,<\/a> this flare came from something called a \u201cTidal Disruption Event\u201d (TDE). This occurs when a star wanders too close to a black hole and gets torn apart by its immense gravity.<\/p>\n The physics is complex, but you can imagine it like the star being stretched and shredded into a stream of gas. Part of that gas gets slingshotted away, while the rest spirals into the black hole, heating up and glowing extremely bright.<\/p>\n Big boom in the darkness of space<\/p>\n It is this that results in the flares that astronomers are able to detect. In this case, the doomed star must have been massive (about 30 times the Sun\u2019s mass), which made the flare exceptionally powerful.<\/p>\n According to the team, the total energy released was about 10\u2075\u2074 ergs. An erg is a unit of energy equal to 10\u22127\u00a0joules (100 nJ).<\/p>\n The amount produced by this observed event is, therefore, equivalent to turning the entire mass of the Sun into pure energy (E = mc\u00b2). To put that into perspective, that\u2019s millions of times more energy than a typical supernova.<\/p>\n This event <\/a>stands out for several reasons, such as its exceptional brightness. Nothing like it has been seen before. Another standout feature is its distance and age. The light traveled 10 billion years to reach us, so this must have happened when the universe was only about one-third of its current age.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The location or environment is also interesting. It occurred inside an Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN), or a galaxy core already glowing because its central black hol<\/a>e<\/a> is feeding on gas.<\/p>\n