It was such a violent explosion that it literally punctured a hole in the plasma surrounding the black hole, which was discovered when observed with an X-ray telescope.
The explosion was not only gigantic, but extremely slow.
“It happened very slowly – like in slow motion that stretched out over hundreds of millions of years,” explained Johnston-Hollitt.
NASA scientists were able to confirm the unprecedented explosion. “Radio data fits into X-rays like a gloved hand,” co-author Maxim Markevich of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center said in a statement. “This is a clincher that tells us that an eruption of unprecedented size has occurred here.”
“It's a bit like archeology,” Johnston-Hollitt said. “We were given the tools to dig deeper with low frequency radio telescopes, so we should be able to find more explosions like this.”
According to Johnston-Hollitt, the team now plans to conduct additional observations with twice the number of telescopes, which will increase the sensitivity tenfold.
This article was published by Futurism.
Sources: Photo: CXC / Naval Research Lab / Giacintucci, S / XMM / ESA / NCRA / TIFR / GMRTN / 2MASS / UMass / IPAC-Caltech / NASA / NSF
