Nobody does it better than supermassive black hole J2245+3743. It is a bright, active galactic nucleus (AGN), with a mass 500 million times that of our Sun, and it just caused a flare like no other supermassive black hole has done to date. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

The event was spotted by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), based at Caltech's Palomar Observatory, in 2018. The flare brightened by a factor of 40 over the course of a few months. At its peak, it was about as bright as 10 trillion Suns. That’s 30 times brighter than the next brightest flare. For an object 10 billion light-years away, its incredible light is coming loud and clear.

"The energetics show this object is very far away and very bright," le

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