Experts have discovered what could be the brightest object in the universe. A supermassive black hole, which is devouring a star, is spewing out an incredible amount of energy
Scientists have been dumbfounded at the discovery of a black hole which spews out 100 trillion times more energy than the Star Wars Death Star.
Experts discovered a supermassive black hole which is hurling radio waves into the cosmos is in the running to be one of the brightest and most energetic things ever observed in the universe. Boffins have documented numerous incidents where a star drifts too close to a black hole and pulls it apart with its gravitational field.
However a black hole emitting this amount of energy after engulfing a star is completely unprecedented. A team of astrophysicists have crunched the numbers and believe the radio waves being thrown from the blackhole will grow exponentially before the energy emission of the cosmic object will peak next year.
Calculations suggest the current energy outflow is up to 100 trillion times that of the infamous super–powerful Death Star, from the Star Wars universe. Yvette Cendes, an astrophysicist at the University of Oregon, who led the work looking at the one-of-kind black hole said: “This is really unusual. She added: “I’d be hard–pressed to think of anything rising like this over such a long period of time.”
The black hole began the process of hurling massive amounts of energy into the galaxy back in 2018 after it devoured a smaller star which ventured too close to it. In a previous paper Dr Cendes and others calculated the energy emitted from the black hole has continued to rise sharply over the last couple of years.
The black hole is now 50 times brighter than it was when originally detected. The team have estimated the current energy outflow of the black hole has put it on a par with a gamma ray burst which potentially ranks the cosmic phenomena as the most powerful single events ever detected in the universe.
In sci-fi terms, the team calculated the black hole possibly emits 100 trillion times more energy than the Death Star from the Star Wars would be able to produce.
Back in 2022, when the team first announced something unusual was happening with the super sized blackhole, co–author Edo Berger, professor of astronomy at Harvard University, said: ‘We have been studying TDEs with radio telescopes for more than a decade.
‘We sometimes find they shine in radio waves as they spew out material while the star is first being consumed by the black hole.
‘But in AT2018hyz there was radio silence for the first three years, and now it’s dramatically lit up to become one of the most radio luminous TDEs ever observed.’
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