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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY 3: Star Briefly Outshines Rest of Galaxy

Astronomers recently realized that a star explosion, which happened in mid-December, outshone the rest of the galaxy for half a second. The announcement occurred on Friday and caught astronomers by surprise. The light from the starburst was greater than the combined light of trillions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

The star’s location is half a galaxy away, but was still one of the brightest objects--even on Earth. The star is approximately 50,000 light years away. Few other orbiting bodies match the intensity of the explosion, though the Sun and some comets come close. Astronomers stated that the explosion gave off more light in that brief second than the Sun does in hundreds of thousands of years, which explains why astronomers were so perplexed.

No one on Earth directly saw the starburst because it gave off light waves that the human eye cannot detect. Astronomers only knew of the explosion because they detected the radiation waves. Starbursts this intense do not happen very often. In fact, astronomers believe them to happen only once in a millennium. Because it is so unusual, astronomers believe that there may be more activity happening in that area that is, as yet, unknown to them.

--Written by Amelise Javier

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