Mysterious Bright Sky Flash Was A Black Hole Pointing Straight At Earth, Scientists Say
NDTV
Scientists explained that the bright light that came towards Earth resulted from a star straying too close to a supermassive black hole, ultimately meeting its end there as it was ripped to shreds.
An incredibly bright flash that appeared in the night sky in February came from a black hole pointing straight at Earth, astronomers have said. This discovery marks the farthest such event that scientists have ever reported and the first instance in which one was detected using visible light.
The latest findings are reported in two papers. One, 'A very luminous jet from the disruption of a star by a massive black hole,' published in Nature. The other, 'The Birth of a Relativistic Jet Following the Disruption of a Star by a Cosmological Black Hole,' was published in Nature Astronomy.
Scientists explained that the bright light that came towards Earth resulted from a star straying too close to a supermassive black hole, ultimately meeting its end there as it was ripped to shreds. The rare cosmic event occurred 8.5 billion light years away from our planet. The signal from the luminous explosion, known as AT 2022cmc, was first picked up by the Zwicky Transient Facility at the California Institute of Technology's Palomar Observatory on February 11.
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