The flare at its peak was 10 trillion times brighter than the sun.
According to REUTERS reporting, scientists have observed the most energetic flare ever recorded from a supermassive black hole, believed to have been triggered when the black hole tore apart and consumed a massive star. The flare, which peaked at 10 trillion times the brightness of the sun, originated from a black hole about 300 million times the mass of the sun and located 11 billion light-years from Earth.
Researchers said the likely cause was a tidal disruption event, in which a star strayed too close to the black hole’s gravitational pull and was shredded. “It seems reasonable that it was involved in a collision with another more massive body in its original orbit around the supermassive black hole which essentially knocked it in,” said Caltech astronomer Matthew Graham, lead author of the study published in Nature Astronomy.
The star was estimated to be 30 to 200 times the mass of the sun and was “spaghettified”—stretched and heated until it emitted immense energy before being swallowed. The flare, which peaked in June 2018, was 30 times more luminous than any previously observed and is expected to fade completely within about 11 years, Graham added.