NATIONAL HARBOR, MD. — A bright blip in a distant galaxy may link two mysterious categories of cosmic flares. The event, which astronomers playfully call the Platypus, could also offer a new way to understand the origins of supermassive black holes that reside at the centers of most galaxies.
The brilliant burst, spotted in a dwarf galaxy about 6.5 billion light-years from Earth, has many of the hallmarks of a tidal disruption event, the final flash of a star being ripped apart by a black hole. But it also resembles another type of flash, dubbed an LFBOT, which astronomers think might be a class of exploding star.