Black Hole Explosion Shines as Bright as Ten Trillion Suns and Astonishes Astronomers

An international team of astronomers has recorded an unprecedented cosmic event — the largest and most distant explosion ever observed from a supermassive black hole. The phenomenon, nicknamed “Superman”, occurred about 10 billion light-years from Earth and reached a luminosity equivalent to 10 trillion suns.

The dazzling light originated from an active galactic nucleus (AGN) — an extremely energetic region at the center of a galaxy, where a black hole consumes vast amounts of gas and dust. As this material spins and heats up around the black hole, it releases intense radiation that can be detected across unimaginable distances.

According to Professor Matthew Graham from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), lead author of the study published in Nature Astronomy, the “Superman” event is extraordinarily rare:

“Only about one in ten thousand active galactic nuclei shows any kind of explosive activity, but this case is so extreme that it stands in a category of its own.”

Scientists believe the black hole devoured a massive star, releasing an enormous amount of energy. This process, known as a tidal disruption event (TDE), occurs when a star ventures too close to a black hole and is torn apart by its gravity.

A Spectacle First Detected in 2018

The event was first identified in November 2018 by two U.S. observatories — the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey and the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), both located at Palomar Observatory in California.

At first, the object appeared to be a blazar — a type of black hole that emits powerful jets of material into space. However, when astronomers revisited the data years later, they noticed something unusual: the object’s brightness changed dramatically over time.

Using more advanced telescopes, such as the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, researchers discovered that the light source was far more energetic than expected — and that the black hole involved had a mass about 500 million times greater than the Sun’s.

A Cosmic Monster Still Feeding

Even after years of observation, the explosion remains active. According to Graham, the black hole is still consuming the remnants of the destroyed star:

“It’s like a whale still swallowing a fish halfway down its throat,” he explained.

The luminosity of the event is 30 times greater than any other known black hole-related explosion, making “Superman” a milestone in modern astronomy.

The previous record belonged to an event nicknamed “Scary Barbie”, observed in 2020, when a black hole devoured a star between three and ten times the mass of our Sun. This time, the star destroyed by the “Superman” black hole was at least thirty times more massive, which explains its unprecedented brightness.

For astronomers, the “Superman” event not only pushes the boundaries of what is known about black holes but also hints at new populations of giant stars hidden near the centers of galaxies — regions still filled with mysteries waiting to be uncovered.

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