Slashdot: Telescopes Detect 'Biggest Explosion Since Big Bang'

Telescopes Detect 'Biggest Explosion Since Big Bang'
Published on February 29, 2020 at 08:15AM
Scientists have detected evidence of a colossal explosion in space -- five times bigger than anything observed before. Iwastheone shares a report: The huge release of energy is thought to have emanated from a supermassive black hole some 390 million light years from Earth. The eruption is said to have left a giant dent in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster. Researchers reported their findings [PDF] in The Astrophysical Journal. "I've tried to put this explosion into human terms and it's really, really difficult," co-author Melanie Johnston-Hollitt told BBC News. "The best I can do is tell you that if this explosion continued to occur over the 240 million years of the outburst -- which it probably didn't, but anyway -- it'd be like setting off 20 billion, billion megaton TNT explosions every thousandth of a second for the entire 240 million years. So that's incomprehensibly big. Huge."

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