Astronomers Witness The Greatest Explosion Of A Black Hole Ever Recorded [News]

According to National Geographic, a group of astronomers detected the largest explosion of a black hole ever recorded. According to the publication, the event recording has reached a magnitude of at least five times larger than any other studied before this occurrence. The black hole in this explosion is located about 11.5 billion light-years from Earth, has a Supermassive mass equivalent to 1-3 billion suns together, lying in the center of a quasar (a type of galaxy which is extremely bright and energetic). Astronomers are studying the explosion through the powerful telescopes of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile, measuring the speed and the properties of the outage materials.

We discovered the most energetic quasar outflow ever seen, at least five times more powerful than any that have been observed to date. We were hoping to see something like this, but the sheer power of this outflow still took us by surprise. -Nahum Arav, Astronomer at Virginia Tech.

The superb spectroscopic data of this quasar have allowed for a breakthrough in quantifying the energetics of what is probably a typical quasar outflow." -Korista, Astronomy professor at Western Michigan University.

As the scientists explained, the explosion is releasing an amount of material equivalent to 400 times the weight of our sun’s outage per year, and reach speeds of about 29 million kilometers per hour. As for the black hole, the researchers described it as a giant dynamo, estimating it to be a thousand times more massive than the black hole that lies at the center of the Milky Way.

Massive black holes like this are able to swallow entire solar systems and is quite common for swallowing stars. Moreover, they also spew at high speed, which astronomers believe to be one of the key factors in evolution of galaxies.

The supermassive explosion can help clarify some cosmic questions that intrigue astronomers, like explaining what is the relationship between the mass of a galaxy and the mass of the black hole that lies within, and the reason there are so few giant galaxies throughout the universe and many others.

[Source: National Geographic, Documentation]