A truly incredible and mysterious cosmic phenomenon just became even stranger. A colossal explosion, visible from a billion light-years away and witnessed in 2022, named AT2022tsd, and dubbed the Tasmanian Devil, has caused quite a stir. It has been repeatedly flaring with the intensity of 100 billion Suns, equalling the power of the original explosion, for months after the initial flash.
This explosion falls into a rare group called luminous fast blue optical transients (LFBOTs), with only a few others ever discovered. The continued behavior of the Tasmanian Devil is the latest in a series of similar LFBOTs exhibiting exceptionally bizarre characteristics that have left scientists baffled. “An event like this has never been witnessed before,” stated astrophysicist Jeff Cooke from Swinburne University of Technology.
LFBOTs, first observed in 2018 with a phenomenon called the Cow and a handful more since then, are known for their extraordinary luminosity and heat which gives them a unique blue color. They also have a very brief duration, unlike the typical brightness and fade out of a supernova.
Due to their abnormal properties, scientists have been struggling to understand the cause of LFBOTs. The most plausible explanation points to the formation of a black hole during a unique type of core-collapse supernova. However, each LFBOT displays its own peculiarities like the Cow’s flat explosion and the Finch’s occurrence in intergalactic space.
The most recent analysis, conducted by astronomer Anna Ho at Cornell University, led to the conclusion that the Tasmanian Devil points to the formation of a black hole or neutron star. The subsequent flares detected after the initial explosion, at least 14 in 120 days, were unusually bright and short-lived, unsettling the scientific community. “LFBOTs are already a kind of weird, exotic event, so this was even weirder,” said Anna Ho.
According to the researchers, the source of the flares remain unknown but could be attributed to a compact object like a black hole. The flashes may be related to accretion and ejection processes from material around the black hole.
This discovery provides a unique insight into the behaviors and life cycles of obscure space phenomena, black holes, and newborn stars. The findings of this investigation have been published in Nature Astronomy.
