Voracious Black Hole Generates Most Powerful Explosion Known

“Astronomers have discovered the largest explosion in the universe–one that has endured for more than 100 million years and generated as much energy as hundreds of millions of gamma-ray bursts. The source of this mayhem? An apparently insatiable supermassive black hole.”

“…jets of energy emanating from the black hole, which itself may be a billion times the mass of our sun.”

“The discovery is unexpected not only because of its record-breaking nature, but because previous work suggested that large black holes don’t consume as much matter or grow as quickly as small ones do. “This new result is as surprising as it is exciting,” comments co-author Paul Nulsen of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. “This black hole is feasting when it should be fasting.”

This will no doubt raise some more scary questions about the supermassive black hole in our milky way…