Lead: On 4 November 2025, a team led by Matthew Graham (Caltech) reported the most energetic flare yet recorded from a supermassive black hole, a burst that briefly emitted light equivalent to about 10 trillion suns. The transient originated from a black hole roughly 300 million times the mass of the Sun located about 11 billion light-years from Earth. Researchers say the flare was likely produced when an unusually large star — roughly 30 to 200 solar masses — wandered close enough to be torn apart and accreted, producing an intense, short-lived glow. The event was first flagged in 2018 by the Palomar Observatory and, after peaking in about three months, is now fading; the full phenomenon is expected to unfold over roughly 11 years.
Key Takeaways
- The flare was reported in Nature Astronomy on 4 November 2025 and led by Matthew Graham of Caltech.
- The emitting black hole has an estimated mass of ~300 million solar masses and lies ~11 billion light-years away.
- The burst reached a peak after about three months and was roughly 30 times more luminous than any prior recorded event of its class.
- The disrupted star is estimated between 30 and 200 times the mass of the Sun, producing a stream of hot gas as it was shredded and accreted.
- First detection came in 2018 via the Palomar Observatory transient survey operated by Caltech.
- The observable flare is ongoing but declining in brightness; models indicate the full accretion and fade could last ~11 years.
- Studying such distant, extreme flares offers a rare look into black hole growth and conditions in the early universe.
Background
Almost every large galaxy harbors a supermassive black hole at its center, but how those behemoths assemble and grow remains an open question. Tidal disruption events (TDEs), where a star is torn apart by a black hole’s tidal forces, provide one of the clearest direct probes of accretion physics and black hole feeding. Historically, observed TDEs have spanned a wide range of luminosities and timescales; this new flare far exceeds previous examples in peak brightness, challenging existing models for how much energy a single TDE can release.
Wide-field optical surveys such as the Palomar Transient Factory and successor programs have increased the discovery rate of unusual transients since the 2010s, enabling follow-up with space- and ground-based observatories. Because the source lies about 11 billion light-years away, the signal arrives from an epoch when the universe was substantially younger, offering insights into black hole and stellar populations at earlier cosmic times. The new report synthesizes multi-year monitoring and multiwavelength analysis to constrain the event timeline and energy budget.
Main Event
The transient was first identified in 2018 by the Palomar Observatory survey run by Caltech; continued monitoring showed a slow rise to an extraordinary peak reached roughly three months after initial detection. At peak, the emission outshone previous similar events by a factor of about 30, yielding a bolometric output equivalent to the combined light of roughly 10 trillion suns for a brief period. Observers interpret the signal as the thermal and possibly nonthermal radiation from stellar debris that was heated as it streamed inward and circularized around the black hole.
Analysis indicates the disrupted star was unusually massive — models place it between about 30 and 200 solar masses — and the strong tidal forces near a ~3×10^8 M☉ black hole would stretch the star into an elongated stream, a process often described as “spaghettification.” That debris then shock-heated and formed a bright accretion flow. Multiwavelength follow-up (optical and other bands reported in the study) helped constrain temperature and total emitted energy, supporting the tidal-disruption interpretation over alternatives such as an unusual supernova or microlensing.
The emission is not instantaneous; after the three-month climb to peak brightness the light curve has entered a decline that researchers expect to persist on decadal timescales. The team estimates the overall observable phase should continue for roughly 11 years as the remaining debris accretes or becomes radiatively inefficient. Because of cosmological distance, the observed timeline is stretched by redshift, and the intrinsic timescales in the host galaxy’s frame are shorter.
Analysis & Implications
This flare challenges theoretical limits on how luminous a single TDE can be, suggesting either an unusually massive progenitor star or an efficient conversion of accreted mass into radiation. If the disrupted star indeed lay at the high end of the 30–200 M☉ range, its mass alone could supply the large energy budget, but that raises questions about the prevalence of such massive stars in the host galaxy 11 billion years ago. The result therefore bears on both stellar population models and black hole feeding rates in the early universe.
For black hole growth, an event that channels a large fraction of a massive star’s mass into the central hole can be a meaningful, albeit stochastic, contribution to mass assembly. However, TDEs are rare; whether such extreme, high-energy disruptions are common enough to significantly influence supermassive black hole mass growth remains uncertain. Observations of more distant, energetic TDEs will be required to assess their statistical impact.
On theoretical fronts, the flare provides constraints for models of debris circularization, shock heating, and radiative transfer under extreme conditions. Simulations will need to reproduce both the rapid rise to a record luminosity and the subsequent multi-year decay, which can test assumptions about viscosity, outflows, and relativistic effects near high-mass black holes. Practically, the event underscores the value of long-duration monitoring and prompt multiwavelength follow-up to capture the full energy budget.
Comparison & Data
| Property | This Event | Typical TDE |
|---|---|---|
| Black hole mass | ~300 million M☉ | 10^6–10^7 M☉ |
| Star mass (estimate) | 30–200 M☉ | ~0.5–5 M☉ |
| Peak luminosity | ~10 trillion Suns (record) | Often < 1/30 of this |
| Rise to peak | ~3 months | Weeks to months |
| Observable duration | ~11 years (expected) | Months to a few years |
The table highlights how this flare departs from more typical tidal disruption events, driven largely by the estimated high mass of the disrupted star and the large black hole mass. Typical TDEs arise from lower-mass stars around lower-mass black holes; those systems produce less luminous, shorter-lived flares. This event quantifies a corner of parameter space — very massive star, very massive hole — that theoretical work has not frequently sampled observationally.
Reactions & Quotes
Researchers involved in the discovery framed the detection as both surprising and informative, emphasizing the combination of survey reach and sustained follow-up required to assemble the dataset.
“The star wandered close enough to the supermassive black hole that it was spaghettified — stretched into a long, thin stream — and that material then spiralled in and shone intensely,”
KE Saavik Ford (astronomer, study co-author)
Ford’s remark summarizes the physical picture for how tidal forces convert stellar mass into luminous accretion flow. The team used that interpretation to fit light-curve and spectral data, concluding that the energetics are consistent with a massive-star disruption rather than alternative transient scenarios.
“This is the most energetic flare of this kind we’ve seen, and its extreme brightness gives us a unique laboratory for accretion physics at high redshift,”
Matthew Graham (Caltech, lead author)
Graham noted that observing such a bright event at a distance of ~11 billion light-years lets astronomers probe conditions when the universe was younger, and that continued monitoring will refine energy estimates and modeled accretion efficiency.
Unconfirmed
- The precise mass of the disrupted star remains uncertain within the published 30–200 M☉ range and awaits tighter spectroscopic or modeling constraints.
- The exact efficiency by which debris converted mass to radiation in this event is modeled but not directly measured; estimates depend on assumptions about circularization and outflows.
- Whether such extreme flares were common in the early universe is still unknown and requires a larger sample of comparable high-redshift events.
Bottom Line
This record-setting flare documents an extreme instance of a tidal disruption event: an unusually massive star disrupted by a very large black hole produced a burst roughly equivalent to the light of 10 trillion suns. The discovery combines long-term survey data and focused follow-up to capture the event’s rise, peak and decline, and it pushes theoretical models to explain how so much energy can be radiated in a single TDE.
For researchers, the event is both a data-rich case study and a prompt to expand search strategies for distant, high-energy transients. Over the next decade of monitoring, the fading light and any late-time signatures will refine constraints on debris dynamics, accretion efficiency, and the role of such events in cosmic black hole growth.
Sources
- Al Jazeera (news report summarizing study and interviews)
- Nature Astronomy (peer-reviewed journal; original study published 4 November 2025)
- Palomar Observatory (observatory/Caltech; survey discovery in 2018)