Five years later, this black hole surprises astronomers by becoming brighter

Supermassive black holes are extremely powerful celestial objects, and sometimes stars are attracted by their gravitational force. But their fate is often quick and spectacular, as their matter is torn away and forms an accretion disk around the black hole. While this event is not uncommon in the universe, astronomers have noticed a black hole with a surprising behavior.

Named AT2018hyz, this black hole surprises astronomers and scientists because its brightness continues to increase after the disappearance of a star in 2018. When such an event occurs, an increase in brightness is observed for a certain period of time before gradually declining. But in this case, its brightness increased in 2019.

According to radio observations, it is now 50 times brighter than in 2019, and the energy released by this supermassive black hole is equivalent to that of gamma-ray bursts. It is currently one of the brightest phenomena in the universe, which surprised scientists, including Yvette Cendes, an astrophysicist at the University of Oregon and lead author of the study, who explains: 

"This is really unusual. I'd be hard-pressed to think of anything rising like this over such a long period of time. If you have an explosion, why would you expect there to be something years after the explosion happened when you didn't see something before?"

And this is a question that astronomers still cannot answer, because it is a unique event in terms of its duration, which challenges their knowledge and understanding of the universe. As a result, further studies will need to be conducted to understand its behavior.