BOAT: The Brightest of All Time

You by now must know that GOAT is the Greatest Of All Time.  But BOAT:  The Brightest of All Time?

• Last October telescopes spotted a gamma ray burst, which is caused by the collapse of a black hole.  These also occur when two black holes or neutron stars collide.  This phenomenon is focused along a narrow beam.  If you happen to be in the path, you could be in trouble.

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  One of Humanity's most serious possible extinction evenf could well be a gamma ray burst.
• However, Planet Earth is so far away from such things that astronomers don't much worry about that, especially as the odds of this beam heading exactly our way are very low.

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  Yet, astronomers detect about a burst a day, and these are only the ones heading in our general direction, which is a small percentage of all GRBs in the Universe.
• The calculation is that an extinction GRB happens once every five million years, but not on here.
• Possibly, a GRB with this potential could have occurred about 450 million years ago.

Well, those phenomena serve as fine background, for if you are in the direct path, the light intensity is way up there.  But that is not the BOAT of my discussion today.  The latest issue of Scientific American reports on the largest-ever cosmic explosion that has raged for years.

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  First detected three years ago, this blast has continued to shine on.  According to a new study, there is a cosmic explosion known as AT2021lwx 8 billion light years from us that has been erupting all those years now, emitting two trillion times the light of our Sun, and 10 times the energy of the brightest supernova ever observed.

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  This explosion was initially spotted by Caltech telescopes in 2020.
• The initial thought was that this was a quasar.  But these fluctuate in energy and brightness.

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  AT2021lwx burns at a steady luminosity.
• The next best guess was a supernova.  But these typically last for months, not years.
• The current thought is that this could be because a star was being pulled into a black hole, and this is the shredding process.  Yet, AT2021lwx this three times brighter for any of these.
• The latest conclusion is that the cause is a massive cloud of gas 100 times the size of our solar solar system orbiting a black hole and somehow got disrupted, now emitting 100 times more energy our Sun will over 10 billion years.

If you got lost a few bullets ago, the same can be said for most astrophysicists.  The problem with their field is they are seemingly baffled by almost everything.  They are confused by anything Black and Dark, like holes, energy and matter.  At 15 Craigside we annually get question about the day and time.  They need to come here to be checked out.

About astrophysicists, the general thought is that they are not different from astronomers.  There are around 10,000 to 15,000 of them in the world, and their salary falls between $90,000 and $117,000/year.  Not much actually, considering that most have doctorates.  The median PhD salary in the USA is around $100,000.  Of course, someone like Neil Degrasse Tyson makes half a million/year and has a net worth of $7 million.

From all current reports, the eye of another super typhoon, this one called Mawar, again just missed Guam to the north as a Category 4, and seems headed straight to Taiwan.  However, the expectation is a northern movement, placing Okinawa in jeopardy.  

This is the largest typhoon to affect Guam in a couple of decades, although since 2000 23 typhoons have tracked within 200 miles.  The last super typhoon to make landfall was half a century ago.

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