Scientists detect biggest black hole flare ever seen — with the power of 10 trillion suns.

Astronomers have spotted the biggest flare ever seen erupting around a black hole, which also happens to be the most distant flare of this type ever detected.

Discovered using the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), the flare erupted from the supermassive black hole at the heart of an Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) designated J2245+3743 and located in the center of a galaxy 10 billion light-years away from Earth. AGNs are central regions of galaxies that are dominated by feeding, or "accreting," supermassive black holes.

The supermassive black hole in J2245+3743 is feeding on surrounding gas and dust whirling around it in a flattened cloud shape called an accretion disk, but this flare is actually the result of something else: an unusually massive star venturing too close to the black hole which has a mass 500 million times greater than the sun). The tremendous gravitational influence of the black hole is ripping apart the star, and its stellar remains are being fed to this cosmic titan — an occurrence scientists call a tidal disruption event, or TDE.

Source: www.space.com

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