A number of agents announced the discovery of a cosmic explosion 100 times larger than our solar system, confirming that it occurred 3 years ago.
According to international media, according to the research team at the University of Southampton, the size of the detected explosion – which is a ball of energy – exceeds the size of our solar system a hundred times.
They explained that it suddenly ignited three years ago, and the force of the explosion was ten times greater than any other explosion, pointing out that its continuation of more than 3 years would make it the most active among all similar explosions.
The research team added that the explosion occurred about 8 billion light-years ago when a massive black hole swallowed a huge cloud of gas, perhaps thousands of times larger than the sun, as the explosion sent electrical waves through space, leaving extremely hot remnants inside.
The source indicated that astronomers are examining the causes of this phenomenon, which, over the course of 3 years, released an unlimited amount of energy that exceeds what results from a gamma-ray burst.
The phenomenon, dubbed AT2021lwx, is not the brightest ever recorded and is attributed to a gamma-ray burst (GRB221009A) that was detected in October 2022 and was thought to be the “brightest of all time.”
According to the study’s lead author, Philip Wiseman, an astrophysicist at the University of Southampton, UK, AT 2021 LWX is the result of an “accidental discovery”.
The cosmic explosion was monitored in 2020 by the US observatory, the “Zwicky Transit Facility” in California, but the “AT 2021 LWX” note remained unused in the observatory’s database, according to Weizmann, until scientists discovered it the following year.
-Artist’s illustration of the brightest galaxy in the universe, W2246-0526. Recent scientific research indicates the presence of turbulent gases in this galaxy, which is the first of its kind.
-Direct observation of the phenomenon changed the situation, while analysis of the light proved that it took 8 billion years to reach the telescope.
Astronomers are still wondering about the reason for this phenomenon, because it could be a supernova, that is, a massive explosion of a star at the end of its life. However, the luminosity produced by “AT2021 LWX” is ten times greater than the luminosity produced by the supernova.
The second possibility is that this explosion is an astronomical phenomenon represented in the collapse of a star after it came very close to a supermassive black hole, but the brightness of “AT 2021 LWX” is three times greater to prove a similar scenario.
The measured luminosity can only be compared to the luminosity of quasars. These galaxies contain a supermassive black hole sticking to matter that is emitting a huge amount of light. But the light emitted by quasars is bright, whereas in 2021 LWX the light suddenly turned bad three years ago, Wiseman says. : “We have never seen a similar phenomenon, it seems to come out of nowhere.”
Weizmann’s team presented an idea in the study, which is that a huge cloud of gas the size of 5,000 suns is being devoured by a supermassive black hole.
Since the principle of science is that “there are no proven theories,” the team works on a new simulation using a data set, with the goal of testing the “deterministic plausibility” of their theory.
But the problem lies in the huge black holes that are believed to be in the center of galaxies, and that the size of “AT 2021 LWX” should be similar to the size of the Milky Way galaxy. No one has yet discovered a galaxy in the vicinity of the observed phenomenon, Weizmann says: “It is a real headache.”
