November 6, 2025
Space drama, comment karma
Black Hole Flare Is Biggest and Most Distant Seen
Biggest black hole flare ever sets off hype vs. pedants war
TLDR: A record-breaking black hole flare, likely a star being torn apart 10 billion light-years away, outshone anything seen before. Commenters clashed over hypey energy analogies and anthropomorphic wording, splitting into science-pedants vs. storytelling-fans while debating if it’s a true star snack (TDE) or just a black hole burp.
Space just served us its loudest fireworks: a supermassive black hole 10 billion light-years away lit up with a flare as bright as 10 trillion suns. Scientists say it’s likely a tidal disruption event (TDE), a star getting shredded after drifting too close to an active galactic nucleus (AGN)—a feeding black hole. The beast, dubbed J2245+3743, outshone previous flares by 30x, and thanks to cosmic slow‑mo (time dilation), we’re watching it at quarter speed. Think “fish halfway down a whale’s gullet,” but in space.
The comments went thermonuclear. The hottest fight: hype vs accuracy. User vkou torched the “convert the Sun to pure energy” line, arguing it wrongly suggests the star’s whole mass turned into light—cue cheers from the E=mc² police. Meanwhile, SoftTalker roasted the phrase “the star wandered,” dragging the idea that stars have free will. Cue memes: the “drunk star,” “don’t victim‑blame the star,” and a flood of space‑whale jokes. Science sticklers sparred over whether this was a clean TDE or just an AGN “burp,” while confused readers asked why seven years here equals two there. Also trending: farewell to Scary Barbie, the old record flare—now overshadowed like a candle next to a floodlight. For more on the telescopes, see Caltech/ZTF.
Key Points
- •A Nature Astronomy study reports the most powerful and most distant flare from a supermassive black hole ever observed.
- •The event, first seen in 2018 by ZTF and Catalina, brightened by 40x and peaked at 30x the luminosity of any prior black hole flare, equivalent to 10 trillion suns.
- •The source is AGN J2245+3743, about 500 million solar masses and located roughly 10 billion light-years away.
- •The flare is most likely a tidal disruption event involving a star at least 30 solar masses being torn apart and accreted.
- •The previous record candidate TDE (“Scary Barbie”) was ~30x weaker and involved a smaller (3–10 solar masses) star; long-term surveys enable observing such time-dilated distant events.