April 5, 2017 - Mysterious Flash of Cosmic X-rays With 1,000 Times
More Energy Than All Stars in Milky Way Galaxy! What Was It?
More Energy Than All Stars in Milky Way Galaxy! What Was It?
“We may have observed a completely new type of cataclysmic event.”
- Kevin Schawinski, of ETH Zurich in Switzerland
Possible explanations include gamma-ray bursts (GRB) caused by the collapse
of a massive star; the merger of a neutron star with another neutron star or a
black hole; or the shredding of a white dwarf by a medium-sized black hole.
See: June 2017 Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/Pontifical Catholic Univ./ F. Bauer et al.
Prior to October 2014, NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory had never seen anything like this unique eruption that produced a thousand times more energy than all the stars in our Milky Way Galaxy — and has never been seen again. The Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes determined the source to be a small galaxy some 10.7 billion light-years from Earth in our 13.8 billion-years-old universe.
https://www.earthfiles.com/index.php#ChandraMysteryXraysGigantic2014
