'Unlike any we've ever seen': Record-breaking black hole eruption is brighter than 10 trillion suns

A supermassive black hole appears to have generated a record flare after gobbling a star at least 30 times more massive than the sun.

The event has yet to be confirmed as a tidal disruption event (TDE), which happens when a black hole devours a star (or similar object) that strays too close to the black hole's gravity. But if verified, this TDE — called J2245+3743 — would be the most powerful and distant energy flare ever recorded from a supermassive black hole.

"If you convert our entire sun to energy, using Albert Einstein's famous formula E = mc2, that's how much energy has been pouring out from this flare since we began observing it," K. E. Saavik Ford, an astronomer at the City University of New York (CUNY), the Borough of Manhattan Community College and the American Museum of Natural History and a member of the research team, said in a statement.

The findings, reported Nov. 4 in the journal Nature Astronomy, would easily override the previous candidate record-holder. Nicknamed "Scary Barbie" (a character from the 2023 live-action "Barbie" film) in 2023, after its classification as ZTF20abrbeie, that earlier flare from a different supermassive black hole was estimated to have swallowed a star only between three and 10 times the mass of the sun.

Very far, and very bright

The newly published event emerged from a huge feeding black hole, also known as an active galactic nucleus (AGN). The supermassive black hole is believed to be more than 500 million times more massive than the sun. It is also quite distant, at 10 billion light-years away. (For comparison, the universe is about 13.8 billion years old.)

As astronomers watched the black hole over several months, the flare shined up to 30 times brighter than other flares seen before, with the brightness of about 10 trillion suns at its peak. The peak luminosity also varied by fortyfold during the observation period.

"The energetics show this object is very far away and very bright," lead author Matthew Graham, a research professor of astronomy at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), said in the statement. "This is unlike any AGN we've ever seen."

Graham is also a project scientist for the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), which first observed the event in 2018 from its site at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego. Several other telescopes in space and on Earth have been periodically watching the flare ever since.

When the research paper was written, the flare was still ongoing, although it was also fading. Graham said the flare is likely dimming because the star is not fully consumed yet, like "a fish only halfway down the whale's gullet."

The flare's luminosity is even more remarkable when compared with the roughly 100 other TDEs recorded so far. Most of the flares are at a similar brightness scale as a black hole's normal feeding activity, which makes them hard to spot. So J2245+3743's brightness came as a surprise because the flare was easily visible above its black hole's usual activity.

While the suspected massive star being shredded in the TDE would be a rare find, others are probably out there, the team said. The researchers plan to examine ZTF data for more events like this, and they said the newly completed Vera C. Rubin Observatory may spot some more as it scans the sky.