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RandomFactor writes:

A new study tells the cataclysmic tale of an explosion 390 Million light years away, the largest ever detected by a factor of five, that tore through the heart of the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster (archive) leaving a crater fifteen Milky Way galaxies wide.

[Study lead author Simona Giacintucci, of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C] and her colleagues think the source was a supermassive black hole in one of the cluster's constituent galaxies — specifically, jets of radiation and material spewing from the light-gobbling monster, which are powered by inflowing gas and dust.

The theory that the massive gap was created by a ridiculously large explosion "hundreds of thousands of times greater than explosions typically seen in galaxy clusters" powered by a black hole and accelerating material outward at almost the speed of light was postulated in 2016 but was not confirmed.

Giacintucci and her colleagues just made that determination, after analyzing additional X-ray data from Chandra and Europe's XMM-Newton space telescope, as well as radio information gathered by the Murchison Widefield Array in Australia and the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India.

Researchers indicate that the black-hole-fueled fireworks in Ophiuchus have, however, ended with "no evidence of ongoing activity"

The paper was published February 27th in The Astrophysical Journal
You can read a free preprint of the paper here.

Original Submission