Super-massive black hole explosion the size of 15 Milky Ways

ack

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Researchers at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research have discovered the largest explosion ever observed in the universe since the Big Bang.

The explosion emanated from a supermassive black hole at the center of the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster some 390 million light-years from Earth.

"And we don't know why it's so big."

To make the discovery, the researchers used four telescopes across the globe, including NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton X-ray space observatory.

It was such a violent explosion that it literally punched a hole in the plasma surrounding the black hole, as spotted through X-ray telescope observations of the galaxy cluster.

"The difference is that you could fit 15 Milky Way galaxies in a row into the crater this eruption punched into the cluster's hot gas," Giacintucci said in the statement.

The blast was not only gigantic, but also extremely slow.

"It happened very slowly — like an explosion in slow motion that took place over hundreds of millions of years," Johnston-Hollitt explained.

Scientists at NASA were able to confirm the unprecedented blast.



https://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers-have-just-recorded-the-biggest-explosion-since-the-big-bang
 

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