In a flare of light that traveled for 10 billion years to reach us, astronomers have identified the most powerful and most distant blaze of energy ever recorded from a black hole , an eruption whose peak shone with the power of 10 trillion Suns.

The cause of this colossal event, says a team led by astrophysicist Matthew Graham of Caltech, was likely a supermassive black hole 500 million times the mass of the Sun devouring an unlucky star that flew a little too close to the powerful gravity well at the center of a distant galaxy. These black hole feasts are known as tidal disruption events ( TDEs ).

"The energetics show this object is very far away and very bright," Graham says . "This is unlike any AGN [active galactic nucleus] we've ever seen."

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