Black Holes are the mysterious monsters of the Universe. But this isn’t just a monster but a Goliath of the monstrous Black Holes. Scientists have detected an explosion of a supermassive black hole situated 390 million light-years away in the Ophiuchus Galaxy Cluster.
The massive explosion had occurred millions of years ago blowing its superheated gas into the deep intergalactic space.
How powerful was the explosion from this supermassive black hole?
Supermassive black hole eruptions aren’t uncommon. These powerful explosions are fueled by the release of the most intensive-energy compressed in the encircling disks of hot gases known as ‘Event Horizon’.
The scientists have confirmed that the energy released from this explosion is 1000s of times more powerful than any other explosions ever recorded before.
According to a report published in Astrophysical Journal, the energy released from this single explosion was around 100 billion times more powerful than the energy released from the Sun in its entire lifetime.
The blast was 5 times more powerful than the previous titleholder. This is the most powerful explosion ever recorded in the history of mankind. This humongous explosion makes the biggest nuclear explosions look like a tiny spark in a lighter.
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Where is this massive black hole?
This supermassive black hole is situated at the center of the Ophiuchus Galaxy Cluster which is around 400 million light-years away from the earth.
The proof of this supermassive eruption was recorded for the 1st time in 2016 from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, it appeared like an unusual curve in the image of the Ophiuchus cluster.
Image showing the biggest explosion in the universe, as scientists have observed occurring in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster. Image source: International Centre For Radio Astronomy Research/Nasa/PA
However, there were debates about if it really was an eruption from the black hole as the energy released was too massive to be considered.
But this unconfirmed fact is now positively confirmed that it indeed was an explosion from the black hole with the evidence gathered from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, ESA’s XMM-Newton, the Giant Metrewave Telescope, and the Murchison Widefield Array, along with the newly collected radio data from the radio telescopes by astrophysicist Simona Giacintucci and her team at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC.
The scientists confirmed that the evidence from 2016 is 100% true by double-verifying the data with the latest radio data. It is found that the electrons accelerated to the speed of light to make the cavity glow with radio waves.
According to the scientists, these electrons were accelerated by a powerful outburst that occurred 240 million years from this supermassive black hole at the heart of Ophiuchus Cluster.
Prf. Melanie Johnston-Hollitt from the Curtin University node of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research said, “we’ve seen outbursts in the centers of galaxies before, but this one is really, really massive. And we don’t know why it’s so big. But it happened very slowly – like an explosion in slow motion that took place over 100s of millions of years.”
This latest revealing shows how small we have explored the space and at the same time gives a whole new perspective of the scale of the ongoing celestial phenomena.
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