A team of researchers say they have found evidence of the biggest explosion ever observed.
The colossal burst of energy is of a magnitude five times greater than anything previously seen and could even be the biggest explosion since the Big Bang.
It is believed to have emanated from a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy and released around 100bn times as much energy as our sun.
If you’re finding that hard to visualise, you’re not alone.
Melanie Johnston-Hollitt, co-author of the report appearing in the 1st March edition of the Astrophysical Journal, told BBC News: ‘I’ve tried to put this explosion into human terms and it’s really, really difficult.’
Giving it a go, she continued: ‘The best I can do is tell you that if this explosion continued to occur over the 240 million years of the outburst – which it probably didn’t, but anyway – it’d be like setting off 20 billion, billion megaton TNT explosions every thousandth of a second for the entire 240 million years.’
She added: ‘So that’s incomprehensibly big. Huge.’
Explosion was nearly 400m light years away
The black hole at the centre of the explosion is around 390m light years from Earth, which means – to borrow a line from Star Wars – it took place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
The event is believed to have left a massive ‘dent’ in the Ophiuchus cluster, a vast gathering of thousands of individual galaxies along with dark matter and plasma.
Scientists spotted what they believed to be the edge of a cavity in the cluster in 2016.
The cavity was around 1.5m light years across and the sheer size had researchers questioning whether it could really be the result of an explosion.
Data obtained from low-frequency telescopes located in India and Australia now appear to confirm the theory, however.
Researchers discovered that the cavity was filled with radio plasma or superheated gas, which they believe is from electrons accelerated to close to the speed of light.
Although black holes are known for drawing in surrounding matter, it is not uncommon for them to expel material and energy in the form of explosions.
This is by far the largest one ever observed, being thousands of times more powerful than most.
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