From a small flash in the sky to the biggest cosmic explosion ever observed, sometimes there is only one (big) step. As the English newspaper explains The GuardianAstronomers from the University of Southampton (UK) have revealed that they have observed and begun to study this record-breaking explosion, initially discovered in 2020.
If this event is of an exceptional nature, the scientists’ estimates give a gigantic impression of the magnitude of the celestial event. It is estimated that the luminosity that emerges from it, which has therefore lasted for three years, is ten times more powerful than any supernova known to date. Due to its observation time, it is even possible to consider this episode as the most energetic recorded to date.
“Over three years, this event released about 100 times more energy than the sun did in its 10 billion-year lifetime,” the Sun explained. guardian Dr Philip Wiseman.
According to the researcher behind the study of the explosion, scientists have “estimated that it is a fireball 100 times the size of our solar system, with a luminosity measured at around two trillion times that of the sun.”
The source of the explosion remains difficult to prove.
The phenomenon was first recorded in 2020 by the Zwicky Transient Facility, a wide-field astronomical survey using a new camera attached to a telescope at a California observatory, but it did not immediately spark astronomers’ interest. It was only after taking a closer look at the figures evoking the distance and power of the phenomenon that the team of scientists, led by Dr. Wiseman, grasped the significance of the event.
AT2021lwx, the name given to the explosion, quickly became an exciting subject of study for researchers unable to pinpoint the causes of the explosion. In fact, the various predicted and scientifically provable hypotheses – supernova explosion, tearing of a star caused by a black hole – do not seem to match the power returned by the phenomenon in question.
Without a scientifically verified scenario, the researchers present the theory, which they are trying to make “plausibly inescapable”, of the ingestion of a gigantic cloud of gas by a supermassive black hole.
This cosmic cloud, made up of gas and dust, would be one of those often found around black holes. If no explanation forms it not encore donnée de la raison pour laquelle le nuage aurait dévié de son orbite, les astronomers suppose qu’une partie de ce halo poussiéreux peut avoir été perturbée par una collision de galaxies, et envoyée vers l’intérieur du black hole.
As the cloud spiraled toward the black hole’s “event horizon,” the name given to the outer edge of the black sphere, it would have emitted vast amounts of heat and light, illuminating part of the cloud and heating it to a temperature of about 12 -13,000°C.
Although it is clearly the largest explosion ever observed, the AT2021lwx explosion is not, however, the brightest. Last year, two NASA space telescopes recorded a gamma-ray flare, dubbed GRB221009A. However, it only lasted a handful of minutes, far from the three years of brilliance of the AT2021lwx phenom.
Source: BFM TV
