'Absolutely gargantuan': astrophysicist explains largest cosmic explosion ever witnessed – video

Scientists at Southampton University say they accidentally stumbled upon the largest explosion ever recorded in the cosmos. Known as AT2021lwx, Philip Wiseman, a lead researcher at the university says his team believed it happened around 8bn years ago. Wiseman said it was only detectable from the earth because of the sheer magnitude of the explosion, which they believe was caused by a giant gas cloud plummeting into a black hole. Wiseman said: 'A giant cloud of material far bigger than a normal star that is being shredded by or partially shredded by the black hole and that shredding is sending some kind of shock through the rest of the cloud, that shock is about 100 times the size of our solar system so it's absolutely gargantuan.'

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