The cosmos is so full of mysteries that sometimes, astronomers find answers to things you may have never heard of. Take, for example, the bright fast blue optical transients—LFBOTs for short—those strange, fading flashes of blue and ultraviolet light whose source has long eluded astronomers. Well, astronomers finally have an answer.

LFBOTs are relatively rare events. They are so bright that they can be seen for hundreds of millions to billions of light-years. But it only lasts for a few days. Astronomers spotted one for the first time in 2014 but have only found about a dozen since. Last year, astronomers led by the University of California (UC), Berkeley, spotted AT 2024wpp, the brightest LFBOT seen to date. A close investigation of this lucky signal seems to suggest that the blue flashes are the remnants of a hungry, supermassive black hole tearing apart its companion star.

Two analysis papers, led by Natalie LeBaron and Nayana AJa graduate student and a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley, respectively, has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and at the moment AVAILABLE in arXiv.

“SA 2024wpp belongs to this unique class of transients powered by a central engine with extreme brightness and time scales,” Nayana AJ told Gizmodo in an email. “More broadly, this event shows how cosmic explosions of this type can reveal invisible black holes and extreme physics.”

A mystery in blue

The rarity of LFBOTs makes it difficult to determine their origin. Astronomers have some guesses, such as strange supernovas or a black hole excavating cosmic gas, but the data is not the best match for such scenarios. So when the team noticed how ridiculous AT 2024wpp was, investigations began immediately.

“It was immediately clear that this was no ordinary phenomenon,” Nayana AJ recalls.

“Typically, LFBOTs are discovered at distances that are too far for datasets this large and detailed to capture,” LeBaron added, also in an email to Gizmodo. But because AT 2024wpp is so bright, the team has a unique opportunity to make follow-up observations over many months, he added.

And it literally took everything the astronomers had; the initial analysis only used three X-ray telescopes, three radio telescopes, and three ground-based telescopes to measure the signal at all possible wavelengths. Then, Nayana AJ and LeBaron each lead analysis teams to select the data.

The weirdest of all

From their investigations, the researchers hypothesized that LFBOTs come from strong water disruption events preceded by a “parasitic” black hole binary system, according to a university. statement. At the very least, the observation of AT 2024wpp proves that these transients “require some kind of central source of energy that goes beyond what a supernova can produce normally on its own,” LeBaron explained.

In this scenario, a supermassive black hole over 100 times the mass of our Sun would gradually absorb stellar material from its companion star. Eventually, the star will float too close to the black hole, and the poor thing will disintegrate into a spinning disk of debris. Finally, collisions between stellar debris and gas swirling around the black hole produce jets of X-ray, ultraviolet, and blue light—a bright fast blue optical transient.

Tidal disruption events are not common, but the causes of LFBOTs should be more spectacular, because “AT 2024wpp evolves on very short timescales, which allows us to examine black holes in a range that connects stellar-mass and supermassive black holes,” added Nayana AJ.

Full of surprises

For astronomy in general, the new analysis has several important implications. It’s a stellar demonstration of how many capable telescopes around the world (and in space) can quickly coordinate to piece together a “more complete picture” of mysterious cosmic signals, Nayana AJ explained.

Importantly, studying what comes out of a black hole provides critical clues to the physics inside and around a black hole, the researchers added. And the next generation of telescopes—including the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, when it is not looking into the void—Mankind’s knowledge of the universe is for certain destined to grow richer.