Astronomers at Queen's University, Belfast believe they have solved the mystery of an "extraordinarily brilliant" light in a distant galaxy.
A spinning black hole ‘swallowed’ a star passing too close to it, creating the biggest and brightest blast ever seen, the astronomers have discovered.
‘Supermassive’ black hole ripped apart the star
Black holes are a region of spacetime with gravitational effects so strong that nothing – not even particles and light – can escape from inside it. The "supermassive" black hole under observation is believed to have a mass of "at least 100m times that of the sun".
The light source, named ASASSN-15lh, was initially categorised in the US last year as the brightest supernova (exploding star) ever seen.
QUB Professor Stephen Smartt, however, said: "We observed it and thought: 'Nah, it doesn't look like a supernova to us.'"
He said the light "puzzled us for months" but based on their telescopic observations, the QUB team came up with a new explanation for the phenomenon,BBC.comreported.
The team believes the sun-like star wandered too close to the black hole and was “swallowed” – a “tidal disruption event” as it is called.
The star was "spaghettified and some of the material was converted into huge amounts of radiated light," QUB said in a statement.
"This gave the event the appearance of a very bright supernova explosion, even though the star would not have become a supernova on its own as it did not have enough mass."