The black hole flare, as the phenomenon is known, is thought to be the biggest and most distant ever recorded --- it was detected from 10 billion light-years away.

"This is really a one-in-a-million object," said Matthew Graham, a research professor of astronomy at the California Institute of Technology and the lead author of the study, which was published Tuesday in the journal Nature Astronomy.

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[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy is called Sagittarius a. It's about 26000 light years away, so if an event like that happened it would take 26000 years for us to notice. (But who's to say that an event like that didn't happen 25999 years ago? Perhaps we'll see it tomorrow.)

I honestly have no idea where it would fall on the coolness scale. Somewhere between "an astronomer noticed an abnormally bright star" and "my God... so this is how it ends..." So... somewhere between "meh" and "shit"?

[–] teft@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

We probably wouldn’t see it before we were autoclaved off the planet. The burst of neutrinos will be the first indicator and then a few seconds later we’ll be annihilated by the gamma rays. So even if someone is sitting at a detector watching they will probably get “oh damn” out before everything ends.

[–] P00ptart@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

But don't the beams usually get shot out through the north and South poles of the black hole? Far from where we are, on the outer part of one of the arms?

[–] teft@piefed.social 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Sag A* doesn’t point north south in the galactic plane. It’s more like a light house sweeping around with its north and south aligned 50 or 60° off the galactic plane.

This is probably due to collisions in the past with other super massive black holes knocking it off alignment with the galaxy.

[–] P00ptart@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Oh shit, yeah that wouldn't be good at all then. Like a galactic deli slicer. Time to take some X, listen to edm and get the glow sticks out.

[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Haha, "autoclaved off the planet". There's an amazing expression.

[–] teft@piefed.social 1 points 15 hours ago

😃