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Mystery explosion: astronomers have detected a massive gamma-ray burst named GRB 250702B that defies current scientific understanding
Extreme distance: the event occurred several billion lightyears away from our Galaxy, indicating the explosion was incredibly powerful
Unprecedented duration: while most of these bursts last only milliseconds or minutes, this specific event continued for an entire day
Periodic activity: the burst showed repeated and periodic power surges, a phenomenon never before seen in 50 years of observations
Star destruction: gamma-ray bursts usually signal the one-time destruction of a star, making this repeating signal particularly baffling
Deep space: observations from the Very Large Telescope in Chile helped confirm the burst’s origin deep in the distant universe
Stellar collapse: one theory suggests a massive star collapsed in a way never witnessed before, to release such sustained energy
Black hole: another possibility involves a star being ripped apart by a black hole, though the details would require a very unusual pairing
Future study: this unique event is forcing researchers to rethink the mechanics behind the most violent explosions in the cosmos
Credit: ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser