The biggest explosion ever seen!

If like me you've been really busy lately, you might just have missed a seriously big bang - Gaia18cdj - with energy and light almost beyond belief!!!

A new class of cosmic catastrophe

Astronomers have discovered a rare type of cosmic explosion so energetic they have created an entirely new category.

These "extreme nuclear transients" (ENTs) occur when massive stars at least three times larger than our Sun venture too close to supermassive black holes.

We have only ever detected 3 ENTs, making them remarkably rarer than a supernova event (the explosion of a star at the end of its life).

They are incredibly bright - nearly 10 times brighter than typical 'star meets black hole' events - and produce massively more total energy than supernovae events.

This is partly because while supernovae last for months, ENTs last for years.

I know I've just laid the superlatives on pretty thick – "remarkably, incredibly, massively" – but let me put some numbers behind this hype.

Shine bright like Gaia18cdj

The shiniest new bang on the block is Gaia18cdj, an ENT that has shattered every energy record in the book.

Around 9 billion years ago, when the universe was in its star-forming prime, churning out stars 6 times faster than today, one big star wandered a bit close to a gigantic and hungry black hole.

The result was a single explosion that emitted 25 times more energy than the most powerful supernova ever recorded.

In one year, Gaia18cdj and other ENTs have produced 100 times the energy our Sun will output over its entire 10-billion-year lifetime.

These represent the most energetic stellar destruction events we've ever witnessed.

A window into ancient black holes

These cosmic beacons are both visually AND scientifically illuminating.

Their extreme brightness makes them visible across vast cosmic distances, essentially allowing astronomers to peer back in time to when the universe was half its current age.

Galaxies were still under construction, forming stars and feeding supermassive black holes 10 times more vigorously than today.

ENTs provide an unprecedented tool for studying how these galactic giants grew to their massive sizes.

The smooth signal of stellar death

What makes ENTs particularly intriguing is their smooth, long-lasting light curves.

Unlike the erratic flickering we see when a black hole is chowing a smaller star down, these events display a gradual, steadily decreasing brightness.

This suggests the methodical consumption of truly massive stars – a "don't rush your dinner" approach if you will.

This distinctive signature helps astronomers distinguish ENTs from other cosmic phenomena and provides new insights into the physics of extreme gravitational environments.

And this may be their true worth

Don't get me wrong, ENTs are awesomely shiny!

But more importantly, they will help us understand one of the universe's most extreme environments; the growth and life cycle of the largest black holes in the cosmos.

Yours in the joy of shiny things,

Adam S