Scientists have discovered a giant ball of hot gas billions of light-years away from Earth. The most amazing thing is that this ball is much brighter than hundreds of suns in one place.
However, astronomers do not know much about this hot gas ball. Researchers are not able to provide much information about what it actually is. But astronomers are trying to establish a few theories.
This ball of hot gas is so bright that it is difficult to visualize. Astronomers believe that it is a magnet and a type of supernova that is very powerful.
This ball of gas may be the most powerful supernova scientists have ever seen. Ohio State University astronomy professor Krzysztof Stanek said it could be a magnetar. If it is a magnetar, then much of what we previously knew about it would be proven wrong.
The All-Sky Automated Survey of Supernovae is a compact network of telescopes tasked with detecting cosmic luminaries. They were the first to discover a supernova. Although this object is very bright, it is 3.8 billion light-years away and cannot be seen by the human eye.
Since its launch in 2014, ASAS-SN has detected about 250 supernovae, but this search is quite different from other supernovae. It is 200 times brighter than a typical supernova, 570 billion times brighter than the Sun, and 20 times brighter than all the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.
“We need to know how that’s possible,” said Todd Thompson, an astronomy professor at Ohio State. “It takes a lot of energy to make it shine, and that energy has to come from some source.”