{"id":649791,"date":"2026-05-18T05:46:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T05:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/649791\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T05:46:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T05:46:15","slug":"scientists-baffled-after-mysterious-blue-flashes-shining-from-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/649791\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists baffled after mysterious blue flashes shining from space"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists have been left flummoxed after spotting a strange blue light far out in the depths of space.<\/p>\n

Observers have seen the lights flashing for nearly a decade but up to now have been left at a loss about what could be causing this strange phenomenon. <\/p>\n

The first flash was spotted back in 2018, and they have since happened on 14 separate occasions.<\/p>\n

This means that they are one of the rarest phenomenon recorded by astronomers, and have been called Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transients, or LFBOTs.<\/p>\n

But it’s not just their rarity which is extraordinary, it’s also how quickly and how bright they burn.<\/p>\n

In fact, scientists have estimated that they burn as much as 100 times brighter than anything else the scientists have observed<\/a>, which is pretty startling when you think about how bright the Sun is.<\/p>\n

After years of studying them, there is now a theory as to what could be causing these strange<\/a> flashes in space<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"WhoWho knows what’s out there (Alan Dyer\/VWPics\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

No, it’s not UFOs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One group of scientists has theorised that this could be the result of an ultra-hot sun, so that’s much, much hotter than ours, smashing into a black hole.<\/p>\n

LFBOTs come and go over a a matter of just days, reaching an amazing brightness before fading away to nothing.<\/p>\n

In astronomical terms that’s the blink of an eye, so suggests a massive and rapid release of energy.<\/p>\n

Not only that, but that distinctive blue is maintained throughout the event, which scientists think means it’s very hot for the entire time.<\/p>\n

Dr Anya Nugent, from Harvard & Smithsonian, is the lead author of a paper on the flashes, and said they are ‘unlike anything we have observed before’ in science<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By analysing the galaxies in which these events have occurred, the paper suggests that they are the result of a dense object like a black hole or neutron star colliding with a Wolf-Rayet star, which is an extremely bright kind of star.<\/p>\n

\"Yes,Yes, black holes are involved, because of course (Alan Dyer\/VWPics\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Professor Brian Metzger was a co-author on the paper, and told the Daily Mail<\/a>: “When the compact object plunges into the Wolf\u2013Rayet star, it can rapidly accrete the stellar [material] and release a huge amount of gravitational energy.<\/p>\n

“Some of that energy drives powerful outflows or jets, which then collide with material around the star.<\/p>\n

“That interaction can produce a very hot, bright flash of light on a short timescale.”<\/p>\n

The heat of a Wolf-Rayet star combined with the density of a black hole makes for the intensity shown in LFBOTs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have been left flummoxed after spotting a strange blue light far out in the depths of space.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[718,79,193,965],"class_list":["post-649791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-space","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}