Scientists Observe Brightest-Ever Flare from a Supermassive Black Hole
Astronomers have observed the brightest flare ever recorded from a supermassive black hole — an event so luminous it shone with the energy of 10 trillion suns.
The cosmic flash, discovered by the Palomar Observatory in California in 2018, reached its peak brightness over three months and has been gradually fading ever since. Researchers believe the phenomenon occurred when a massive star drifted too close to the black hole and was torn apart by its immense gravitational pull.
“At first, we didn’t really believe the numbers about the energy,” said Matthew Graham of the California Institute of Technology, which operates the observatory. The findings were published Tuesday in Nature Astronomy.
The flare originated from a supermassive black hole located about 10 billion light-years away — the most distant of its kind ever observed. Because the light took so long to reach Earth, the event offers a glimpse into a time when the universe was still young.
Supermassive black holes, which lurk at the centers of most galaxies, including the Milky Way, remain among the most mysterious cosmic objects. Scientists suspect they form early in galactic evolution, but the exact process is still unknown.
By studying flares like this one, researchers hope to better understand the extreme environments around these enormous gravitational wells and how they influence the growth and structure of galaxies.
Joseph Michail of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who was not involved in the research, said the discovery allows scientists “to probe the interaction of supermassive black holes with their environments early in the universe.”
These distant cosmic fireworks, he added, illuminate not just the depths of space, but the history of the universe itself.
