The BBC quoted the University of Southampton research team as saying that the size of the explosion that has been monitored – which is a ball of energy – exceeds a hundred times the size of our solar system, and it is is suddenly ignited three years ago, and it is the brightest, and the force of the explosion is 10 times greater than any other. A similar eruption, which lasted more than 3 years, would make it the most active of them all.
The research team added that the explosion happened around eight billion light-years ago when a massive black hole swallowed a massive cloud of gas, possibly thousands of times larger than the sun, as the explosion sent electrical waves through space, leaving extremely hot remnants in the shape of a giant circular ring.
The source pointed out that astronomers are looking into the causes of this phenomenon, which has released in three years an unlimited amount of energy that exceeds what results from a gamma-ray burst.
phenomenon
This phenomenon, dubbed “AT2021lwx” (AT2021lwx), is not the brightest ever recorded and is due to a gamma-ray burst (a massive burst of energy during the fall of a star) “GRB221009A” (GRB221009A) which was discovered in October 2022, and was thought to be the “brightest of all time”.
However, this cosmic explosion, which was mentioned in the monthly magazine “Monthly Notice” of the British Royal Astronomical Society, can be called “the largest”, because in three years it released an unlimited amount of energy that exceeds what results from a gamma-ray burst, according to the study’s lead author, Philip Weizmann, an astrophysicist at the University of Southampton, UK.
Direct observation The AT 2021 LWX is the result of an “accidental discovery”, Wiseman said.
The cosmic explosion was monitored in 2020 by the US observatory, “Zwicky Transient Facility” in California, but the observation of “AT 2021 LWX” remained unused in the observatory’s database, according to Weizmann, before until scientists find out the following year.
Direct observation of the phenomenon changed the situation, while an analysis of the light proved that it had taken eight billion years to reach the telescope.
Astronomers are still wondering about the cause of this phenomenon, because it could be a supernova, that is to say a massive explosion of a star at the end of its life. However, the luminosity caused by “AT2021 LWX” is ten times greater than that produced by the supernova.
The second possibility is that this explosion is an astronomical phenomenon represented by the breakup of a star after it got too close to a supermassive black hole, but the luminosity of “AT 2021 LWX” is three times greater to prove a similar scenario.
The measured luminosity is only comparable to the luminosity of quasars, as these galaxies harbor a supermassive black hole that latches onto matter emitting a massive amount of light. But the light from quasars is bright, whereas in AT 2021 LWX the light suddenly went bad three years ago. “We have never seen a similar phenomenon, says Weizmann. It seems to come out of nowhere.”
His team has an idea presented in the study, namely that a huge cloud of gas, the size of 5,000 suns, is devoured by a supermassive black hole.
Since the principle of science is that “there are no confirmed theories”, the team is working on new simulations using a data set, with the aim of testing the “deterministic plausibility” of their theory.
But the problem lies in the massive black holes that are believed to be at 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. “It’s a real headache,” says Wiseman.
Subsequently, research is needed in space and in observational databases, and it is likely that similar phenomena will provide clear explanations for AT2021LWX.
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