Scientists in Britain and the United States said in a research published today, Monday, that they have discovered the largest explosion of a star has ever been recorded and that it is ten times stronger than the normal supernova explosion and that it is brighter by about 500 times.
Astronomers from the University of Birmingham in Britain and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the United States described their discovery, dubbed "SN 2016 ABS", as "a very active supernova caused by the explosion of a very massive star" ..
Ido Berger, astronomer involved in the research, said that in addition to its size and brightness, it was "amazing" in other properties as well.
Such supernovae emit only 1 percent of their energy in visible light, but (SN 2016 ABS) emitted a much larger percentage.
SN 2016 ABS is estimated to contain energy equivalent to 200 trillion trillion gigatonnes of explosive TNT.
Because of the unusually high amount of hydrogen present in the explosive cloud, astronomers believe that the supernova was originally formed by the fusion of two suns.
Scientists hope that the discovery of (2016 ABS) will lead to another similar supernova and help to look at the conditions that prevailed in the early years of the universe.
