A Mysterious Object 570 billion times brighter than the sun has been found by astronomers
There is a massive ball of hot gas billions of light-years distant that is brighter than hundreds of billions of suns. [ This is an updated version of the previous article. ] It’s difficult to envision anything so bright. So, what exactly is it? Astronomers aren’t sure, but they do have a few theories. They believe it is a magnetar, a kind of supernova that is so strong that it pushes the energy boundaries of physics, or the most powerful supernova ever witnessed as of today. Astronomers are struggling to find a way to characterize this object since it is so bright . “If it’s a magnetar, it’s as if nature took everything we know about magnetars and turned it up to 11,” said Krzysztof Stanek, professor of Astronomy at Ohio State University and the team’s co-principal investigator. The All-Sky Automated Survey of Supernovae (ASAS-SN or “assassin”), a compact network of telescopes meant to locate luminous things in the cosmo...