Astronomers observe the largest energy explosion ever detected in the universe

[Alfonso Maruccia]

What just happened? Supermassive black holes are some of the most extreme phenomena existing in the universe, as they tend to consume and swallow everything in their wake. One of these cosmic monsters was recently identified as AT2021lwx, an incredibly powerful explosion that surpasses everything recorded thus far.

Discovered "by chance" by a team of astronomers from the University of Southampton, AT2021lwx has being going for a while with a bright energy flash that's never been seen before. The explosion is estimated to be more than 10 times brighter than any known star going into its explosion phase (ie supernova), and three times brighter than a star falling into a supermassive black hole (tidal disruption event).

The AT2021lwx explosion has lasted for three years so far, while most supernova explosions are only visible for a few months. The phenomenon is 8 billion light years away, when the universe was around 6 billion years old, and it's still being tracked by a network of telescopes. Explosions brighter than AT2021lwx were identified before but they lasted just a fraction of the time, which means the energy released by AT2021lwx is way larger.

The astronomers think the extreme event happening within AT2021lwx can be attributed to a supermassive black hole feeding on a "vast" cloud of gas, which is likely thousands of times larger than the Sun and is mostly made up of hydrogen atoms. The nebula is being "violently" disrupted by the supermassive energy mangler, with its fragments being swallowed by the singularity. This produces "shockwaves" that are felt through the remnants of the nebula, and ultimately through the dusty donut surrounding the black hole.

AT2021lwx was first detected in 2020 by the Zwicky Transient Facility in California, and it was later confirmed by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Hawaii. The two telescopes check the night sky to identify transient objects with rapidly changing brightness levels, which could be an indication of a supernova, an asteroid, or a comet.

The explosion was flagged by the algorithm used at the University of Southampton to search for a type of supernova, and it was immediately identified as an unusual phenomenon as supernovae and tidal disruption events only last for a couple of months before fading away.

The unusual event was later investigated by different telescopes, including the Neil Gehrels Swift Telescope (a collaboration between NASA, UK and Italy), the New Technology Telescope (European Southern Observatory) in Chile, and the Gran Telescopio Canarias in La Palma, Spain.

The only thing brighter than AT2021lwx are quasars, the astronomers explain, which are again supermassive black holes feeding on a constant meal of gas falling into the singularity at high velocity. Quasars' brightness goes up and down over time, the researchers said, while there were no previous signs of the AT2021lwx presence even when looking back at over a decade of data.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/98690-astronomers-observe-largest-energy-explosion-ever-detected-universe.html

 

[mosu]

"The phenomenon is 8 billion light years away, when the universe was around 6 billion years old". Please stop with this nonsense of giving a birth date to the universe, we already received signals from over 30 billion years away and , along with technological development the distance will grow further.

 

[Alfonso Maruccia]

"The phenomenon is 8 billion light years away, when the universe was around 6 billion years old". Please stop with this nonsense of giving a birth date to the universe, we already received signals from over 30 billion years away and , along with technological development the distance will grow further.

That's... what the astronomers say. Not me.

 

[EdmondRC]

"The phenomenon is 8 billion light years away, when the universe was around 6 billion years old". Please stop with this nonsense of giving a birth date to the universe, we already received signals from over 30 billion years away and , along with technological development the distance will grow further.

You are correct that as we peer out further there are plenty of objects well beyond what the big-bang theory predicted and they also appear fully formed and have heavy elements that should not be there with the current cosmological origin theory. James Webb Space Telescope is making this all the more obvious, we are just not seeing what is predicted in these far away galaxies that should be near the beginning of time. While this should be enough to bring the big-bang into question, it doesn't bring into question that the universe had a beginning. The way we know that the universe began is because of red-shift. Everything is moving away from everything else and the further away, the more red-shift we see. An eternal universe does not make sense for a lot of other reasons too, but the dispersal of material and energy moving apart overtime is pretty much a death sentence for any kind of eternal universe. It had a beginning, but the how, when, and why is still unknown to Science.

The big-bang is still the dominant theory because there is simply not a better materialistic explanation (it doesn't make big-bang true or even a good theory). So, until someone pulls out a better theory explaining the origin of the universe that meets the leading arbiters of science's required materialistic requirements, the big-bang will remain the prevailing theory of origins. There are a whole lot of scientists that just don't want to admit the obvious, we have no idea how the universe could have formed from purely natural processes. Because such an admission, while true, suggests that a non-materialistic answer to that question is possible.

 

[Lew Zealand]

"The phenomenon is 8 billion light years away, when the universe was around 6 billion years old". Please stop with this nonsense of giving a birth date to the universe, we already received signals from over 30 billion years away and , along with technological development the distance will grow further.

The consensus among astronomers is that the universe is a bit under 14 billion years old. Where did you read about signals from 30 billion years ago (not away), I doubt their reliability.

 

[EdmondRC]

The consensus among astronomers is that the universe is a bit under 14 billion years old. Where did you read about signals from 30 billion years ago (not away), I doubt their reliability.

I was looking this up and the furthest object is at least 33.4 billion light years away, but I saw other places claiming 48.1 billion light years away. Of course, BB explains this by expansion and redshift, and that's why we can see these objects, even in a 13B year old universe according to the theory. The problem really is that James Webb ST is shaking things up quite a bit because when you look out at these distant stars and galaxies that should be like "looking back in time", they don't exhibit the expected characteristics. This would suggests that something is very wrong with the current model. No one is willing to fully admit it yet though. The galaxies way out there are not any more 'primitive' than the Milky Way, so if that was truly 13.4 billion years ago, what gives? It's a major problem for the theory and there have been a lot of astronomers point that out, but no consensus yet on how to fix it or even if to make a big deal out of it (even though it is a big deal for big bang). We will have to wait and see, but really, BB hasn't been around all that long as a theory and it shouldn't be that big of a surprise that it's looking like it is inaccurate.

 

[neeyik]

The consensus among astronomers is that the universe is a bit under 14 billion years old. Where did you read about signals from 30 billion years ago (not away), I doubt their reliability.

While the evidence points to the Big Bang 'event' occurring 13 to 14 billion years ago, that's not the same as the distance between an observable object formed in the early stages of the universe and ourselves, due to the expansion of spacetime. The comoving distance between us and the limit of the observable universe is something like 45 to 50 billion light years; redshift or light travel distance would be 13 to 14 billion light years.

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

I was looking this up and the furthest object is at least 33.4 billion light years away, but I saw other places claiming 48.1 billion light years away. Of course, BB explains this by expansion and redshift, and that's why we can see these objects, even in a 13B year old universe according to the theory. The problem really is that James Webb ST is shaking things up quite a bit because when you look out at these distant stars and galaxies that should be like "looking back in time", they don't exhibit the expected characteristics. This would suggests that something is very wrong with the current model. No one is willing to fully admit it yet though. The galaxies way out there are not any more 'primitive' than the Milky Way, so if that was truly 13.4 billion years ago, what gives? It's a major problem for the theory and there have been a lot of astronomers point that out, but no consensus yet on how to fix it or even if to make a big deal out of it (even though it is a big deal for big bang). We will have to wait and see, but really, BB hasn't been around all that long as a theory and it shouldn't be that big of a surprise that it's looking like it is inaccurate.

No kidding, that's because the Big Bang is literally just a theory. It is not a law or any kind of fact, just the best explanation of how the universe works based on our knowledge. The number of times that established scientific theories have been disproven are much greater than the current set of valid theories. In other words, scientific theories are usually wrong.

That doesn't mean they're unhelpful, but it does mean we should always take them with a grain of salt. It means we should always be looking for better explanations through discovery and creativity. In my opinion, the best way to measure how inaccurate our understanding of any science is directly related to that. How hard is it to make discoveries in that field? The tools being used greatly influences this. Receiving information limited by the speed of light, only being able to change the inputs and perform experiments in our own solar system, and being limited by instruments that primarily measure electromagnetic radiation with terrible precision means astronomy is mostly horseshit. It's not astronomers' faults, it's a limitation of humanity. Meanwhile when you can change all the inputs and read the outputs as we've done in the world of computers, things progress at breakneck speeds. The creation of AI is the perfect example of this.

This isn't limited to astronomy at all, there's so little understood in most of the natural sciences. The redefinition of a planet was the moment of revelation for me.

 

[B5S46M]

"The phenomenon is 8 billion light years away, when the universe was around 6 billion years old". Please stop with this nonsense of giving a birth date to the universe, we already received signals from over 30 billion years away and , along with technological development the distance will grow further.

You may want to retake your modern physics / astrophysics 101 course(s).

 

[daffy duck]

I was looking this up and the furthest object is at least 33.4 billion light years away, but I saw other places claiming 48.1 billion light years away. Of course, BB explains this by expansion and redshift, and that's why we can see these objects, even in a 13B year old universe according to the theory. The problem really is that James Webb ST is shaking things up quite a bit because when you look out at these distant stars and galaxies that should be like "looking back in time", they don't exhibit the expected characteristics. This would suggests that something is very wrong with the current model. No one is willing to fully admit it yet though. The galaxies way out there are not any more 'primitive' than the Milky Way, so if that was truly 13.4 billion years ago, what gives? It's a major problem for the theory and there have been a lot of astronomers point that out, but no consensus yet on how to fix it or even if to make a big deal out of it (even though it is a big deal for big bang). We will have to wait and see, but really, BB hasn't been around all that long as a theory and it shouldn't be that big of a surprise that it's looking like it is inaccurate.

You have failed tom understand the idea of an expanding universe. That an object is say 30 billion light years away is NOT inconsistent with the age of the universe being roughly 14 billion years according to our CURRENT models. something that emitted light 13 billion years ago could now have moved away from us another 13 billion light years if move at the speed of light and would be 26 billion light years away. We don't need the universe to be 26 billion years old.

Ask Ethan: How Can We See 46.1 Billion Light-Years Away In A 13.8 Billion Year Old Universe?

In General Relativity, the fabric of space doesn't remain static over time. Everything else depends on the details we measure.

www.forbes.com

 

[Bobbydpue]

"The phenomenon is 8 billion light years away, when the universe was around 6 billion years old". Please stop with this nonsense of giving a birth date to the universe, we already received signals from over 30 billion years away and , along with technological development the distance will grow further.

Why so butthurt? Just because you don't agree with some else theory doesn't make your theory right any more right than theirs. Without knowing exactly when it happened how can you be so emotionally invested?

 

[EdmondRC]

You have failed tom understand the idea of an expanding universe. That an object is say 30 billion light years away is NOT inconsistent with the age of the universe being roughly 14 billion years according to our CURRENT models. something that emitted light 13 billion years ago could now have moved away from us another 13 billion light years if move at the speed of light and would be 26 billion light years away. We don't need the universe to be 26 billion years old.

Ask Ethan: How Can We See 46.1 Billion Light-Years Away In A 13.8 Billion Year Old Universe?

In General Relativity, the fabric of space doesn't remain static over time. Everything else depends on the details we measure.

www.forbes.com

You misunderstood what I am saying. I did not say anything about the distance we can see and the age of the universe being incorrect for that reason. What I said is that the galaxies we see at the edge are not matching up with Big-Bang predictions. There are mature looking galaxies with heavy elements and spirals. Similar to the Milky Way. So, if we are truly looking 13B years in the past, there is a major problem with the theory. That is, those should be gassy disc galaxies with primitive stars lacking heavy elements. This is a big, big problem for the theory because the theory predicts a vast amount of time for those elements to form, if they are already present in the most distant galaxies then our entire model of star formation, element formation, everything is wrong and there is very little time for any of that to happen. But, that is what science does right? When a theory becomes so ingrained that new contradictory evidence doesn't call it into serious question it is no longer science is it? Many astronomers know the Big-Bang theory is inaccurate, but they don't speak up much because there is currently nothing to replace it. Which means, in reality, we know very very little about the "how" the universe came to be and likely little about its real age too. Also, you know the 'age' of the universe has changed quite a bit in the past 90 years since the discovery of cosmological red-shift by Edwin Hubble.

Another reason that many won't speak up is because it could be career suicide to do so. Science is not exactly a free exercise where you can take big chances with your career. The big players can discredit you quickly and they will if it threatens their own theories, books, papers, publications, etc. That is why it is so hard for these theories to be overthrown even though there is amble evidence BB needs a replacement or serious recalculation.

 

[neeyik]

What I said is that the galaxies we see at the edge are not matching up with Big-Bang predictions. There are mature looking galaxies with heavy elements and spirals. Similar to the Milky Way. So, if we are truly looking 13B years in the past, there is a major problem with the theory. That is, those should be gassy disc galaxies with primitive stars lacking heavy elements.

Where have read that astronomers are detecting mature galaxies with redshifts greater than 12? At that distance, it's not possible to determine whether they have an actual spiral structure to them, and with regards to their elemental composition, take one of the furthest ones detected: GLASS-z12. The spectroscopic analysis of it suggests a low level of metallicity, with levels in line with current models of dust production, and no sign of heavy elements.

 

[EdmondRC]

Where have read that astronomers are detecting mature galaxies with redshifts greater than 12? At that distance, it's not possible to determine whether they have an actual spiral structure to them, and with regards to their elemental composition, take one of the furthest ones detected: GLASS-z12. The spectroscopic analysis of it suggests a low level of metallicity, with levels in line with current models of dust production, and no sign of heavy elements.

The James Webb telescope found six galaxies that may be too hefty for their age

The galaxies formed in the universe’s first 700 million years and may be up to 100 times more massive than predicted.

www.sciencenews.org

The James Webb Space Telescope discovers enormous distant galaxies that should not exist

Giant, mature galaxies seem to have filled the universe shortly after the Big Bang, and astronomers are puzzled.

www.space.com

 

[neeyik]

The James Webb telescope found six galaxies that may be too hefty for their age

The galaxies formed in the universe’s first 700 million years and may be up to 100 times more massive than predicted.

www.sciencenews.org

That report doesn't state that the galaxies are spiral or mature, and ends on the note that their distances and composition haven't been confirmed. If you read the paper from the researchers, the detected objects are between 7.4 and 9.1, in terms of redshift, so they're not as far as, say, GLASS-z12; however, they do suggest their findings put the masses considerably beyond what galaxy formation models suggest is possible within the timeframe of their existence. If their results are confirmed then it's evidence against the current galaxy model, rather than the Big Bang, as the other galaxies, with further redshifts confirmed by spectroscopy, fit in line with it.

 

[captaincranky]

Well, assuming there was a "big bang", it would be from a point source. However juvenile my math may be, if the big bang occurred 14 billion years ago, then the universe would have to be at least 28 billion years across. You know, like the central point of a sphere.

 

[neeyik]

Well, assuming there was a "big bang", it would be from a point source. However juvenile my math may be, if the big bang occurred 14 billion years ago, then the universe would have to be at least 28 billion years across. You know, like the central point of a sphere.

The observable universe is estimated to be 94 billion light years across. Why is it not 28? Because during the time that we have 'observed' the light traveling, the universe (or rather, spacetime) has expanded, increasing the separation between objects that aren't gravitationally bound.

This stretching is why the wavelength of this light is so long -- we physically can see such distant objects in the visible spectrum, even though the light was originally emitted in that region. It's been stretched out into the infrared region and for the really distant 'light' it's all the way down into the microwave region.

 

[EdmondRC]

The observable universe is estimated to be 94 billion light years across. Why is it not 28? Because during the time that we have 'observed' the light traveling, the universe (or rather, spacetime) has expanded, increasing the separation between objects that aren't gravitationally bound.

This stretching is why the wavelength of this light is so long -- we physically can see such distant objects in the visible spectrum, even though the light was originally emitted in that region. It's been stretched out into the infrared region and for the really distant 'light' it's all the way down into the microwave region.

It assumes that the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light too, by which no mechanism can be described. That's an important and often left out distinction to make. It also assumes that these speeds(light) were constant from just after the singularity. None of this is known, it is all assumed. In fact, the biggest weakness of all modern origin science is the incessant tinkering with assumptions so that the outcomes fit the data and the data fits the outcomes. It is a mess of circular reasoning and tweaking to continue to prop up theories of origins that have long since been disproven if you compare the original targets. In other words, it will always point to the big-bang, because the big bang can always be tweaked to fit the evidence rather than the evidence ever being able to disprove the big-bang. How do we know that the light was not stretched out like we see it today in a matter of minutes? We already know that time is not constant so we have absolutely no way of knowing that time at the edge of the universe is the same time we experience here. Nor can we know that the first hours of the beginning would not appear to be eons of time. We do know this though, the current model requires space to be expanding faster than the speed of light, and everything tells us that shouldn't be possible.

What I'm saying is simply this, there is very little that we actually know from our pinpoint in space and being inside the box itself. We believe we know a lot, but we really don't. We know a lot about what we have access to here on Earth. We can make amazing devices and discoveries, but when it comes to space and even the past, we make tons of assumptions and more than likely we are way, way off target because we can't hold or observe what occurred, just the outcomes. We don't know what is outside the box, we assume the box is all there is. Logic tells us though that can't be true. Else the box itself would not exist.

 

[neeyik]

It assumes that the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light too, by which no mechanism can be described...

...We do know this though, the current model requires space to be expanding faster than the speed of light, and everything tells us that shouldn't be possible.

No actual object is going faster than light in a vacuum, though; there's no violation of general relativity. Spacetime itself isn't moving and the relative motion of objects within the universe still complies with relativity. It's all perfectly possible, just a difficult concept to grasp.