According to astronomers, an extremely bright flash that appeared in the night sky in February was caused by a black hole that was directly pointed at Earth. This discovery represents both the farthest such event ever reported by scientists as well as the first time one was discovered using visible light.
Two papers report the most recent findings. One was published in Nature under the title “A very luminous jet from the disruption of a star by a massive black hole.” The other was published in Nature Astronomy under the title “The Birth of a Relativistic Jet Following the Disruption of a Star by a Cosmological Black Hole.”
According to scientists, the dazzling light that was directed towards Earth was caused by a star that got too close to a supermassive black hole and eventually met its demise there by being torn to pieces. The extraordinary cosmic occurrence took place 8.5 billion light years from our planet. The Zwicky Transient Facility at the Palomar Observatory of the California Institute of Technology initially detected the signal from the bright explosion, known as AT 2022cmc, on February 11.
