Astroboffins suspect twin-star smash may be the culprit for most biggest and brightest supernova yet spotted Astronomers have spotted the biggest and brightest supernova explosion yet spotted and theorize it may have been sparked by two huge stars smashing together. “In a typical supernova, the radiation is less than 1 per cent of the total energy," said Dr Matt Nicholl, of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of …
"SN2016aps, which occurred in a galaxy about 3.6 billion light-years from Earth" - so this happened quite a while back really. It's hard to get one's head round the concept that the universe as we see it doesn't really exist. It's a mass of jumbled history of past events on multiple time scales.
The blast appeared out of nowhere, and when the light faded, lo! there was a galaxy.
It is mind-blowing to realize that we haven't yet catalogued all the galaxies in our visible Universe. It is even more mind-blowing to realize that, with the Deep Field experiment, there is probably no point in our sky that doesn't have a galaxy somewhere in the distance.
An entire galaxy. With tens, if not hundreds of millions of stars. That's one hell of a baryonic mass.
And with all that, supernovae happen multiple times per day.
Whether you believe in God or not, you have to agree that this Universe is one hell* of a creation.
* - meant in a positive light, of course
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