US EditionDistant black hole flare as bright as 10 trillion suns, researchers say
- On Nov 4, 2025, researchers announced the brightest supermassive black hole flare, shining with the light of 10 trillion suns and first spotted in 2018 by the Zwicky Transient Facility at Palomar Observatory.
- Analysis points to a tidal disruption event in which the ill-fated star was shredded by Active Galactic Nucleus J2245+3743.
- The observations show it brightened by a factor of 40 over a few months, peaked at 30 times previous luminosity, and has been decaying for years since.
- Scientists say the event will remain observable for a few years, and researchers expect ground-based telescopes to aid study while teams conduct ZTF archival searches and await Vera C. Rubin Observatory data.
- From about 10 billion light-years away, cosmological time dilation stretches light and time, making long-term surveys like ZTF crucial to spotting distant phenomena in the young universe.
108 Articles
108 Articles
Brightest supermassive black hole flare observed, shining like 10 trillion suns
(UPDATE) NEW YORK — Scientists have spotted the brightest flare yet from a supermassive black hole that shines with the light of 10 trillion suns.These bursts of light and energy can come from things like tangled-up magnetic fields or hiccups in the heated gas disks surrounding black holes. The flares help illuminate researchers’ understanding of the black holes within.The latest cosmic display was spotted in 2018 by a camera at the Palomar Obse…
Observatory spots biggest, most distant black hole flare ever recorded
The flare, co-discovered by the Zwicky Transient Facility, may be the result of a mega black-hole meal The most massive stars in the universe are destined to explode as brilliant supernova before collapsing into black holes. Yet one huge star appears to have never fulfilled its destiny; in a twist of irony, the star wandered too close to a gargantuan black hole, which gobbled it up, shredding the star to bits and pieces. That is the most likely …
Scientists Detected a Black Hole Flare So Massive It Outshines 10 Trillion Suns
About 10 billion years ago, a black hole decided it needed to eat. The meal, a star roughly 30 times the mass of the Sun, didn’t stand a chance. As the black hole ripped it apart, the event unleashed a flare brighter than 10 trillion Suns, the most powerful ever recorded. The light from that eruption has been traveling ever since, only reaching Earth in 2018. Astronomers identified the source as J2245+3743, a supermassive black hole sitting in a…
Most Powerful Black-Hole Flare Ever Recorded Shone Like 10 Trillion Suns
In a flare of light that traveled for 10 billion years to reach us, astronomers have identified the most powerful and most distant blaze of energy ever recorded from a black hole, an eruption whose peak shone with the power of 10 trillion Suns. The cause of this colossal event, says a team led by astrophysicist Matthew Graham of Caltech, was likely a supermassive black hole 500 million times the mass of the Sun devouring an unlucky star that fle…
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