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LiveScience
LiveScience
Ben Turner

A messy black hole may have just triggered the largest explosion in the universe

An artist's impression of a black hole sucking in a cloud of hydrogen gas.

Astronomers have spotted the most powerful cosmic explosion ever seen — a mysterious, years-long eruption 10 times brighter than any observed supernova.

Astronomers spotted the  event, named AT2021lwx, 8 billion light-years from Earth. Releasing roughly 100 times the energy the sun will release over its entire lifetime, the strange explosion burst into activity when the universe was 6 billion years old.

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