The biggest explosion ever seen has been spotted in space – and scientists don’t know for sure where it came from. The blast was brighter than almost anything ever seen and has been going on for years, making it by far the most powerful such event witnessed by scientists. It has been ongoing for more than three years, and took place nearly 8 billion years away. Astronomers have proposed a host of possible explanations for the blast: it may be a vast cloud of gas that was torn apart by a black hole, for instance. But nothing on such a scale has ever been seen before and the explosion may have come from something else entirely. It is more than 10 times brighter than any known supernova and three times brighter than the brightest tidal disruption event, where a star falls into a supermassive black hole. The explosion, known as AT2021lwx, took place when the universe was around six billion years old, and is still being detected by a network of telescopes. The astronomers, led by the University of Southampton, believe the explosion is a result of a vast cloud of gas, possibly thousands of times larger than our sun, that has been violently disrupted by a supermassive black hole. Fragments of the cloud would be swallowed up, sending shockwaves through its remnants, as well as into a large dusty “doughnut” surrounding the black hole. Such events are very rare and nothing on this scale has been witnessed before, the researchers say. Last year, astronomers witnessed the brightest explosion on record – a gamma-ray burst known as GRB 221009A. Although this was brighter than AT2021lwx, it lasted for just a fraction of the time, meaning the overall energy released by the AT2021lwx explosion was far greater. AT2021lwx was first detected in 2020 by the Zwicky Transient Facility in California, and subsequently picked up by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) based in Hawaii. But until now the scale of the explosion had been unknown. Dr Philip Wiseman, research fellow at the University of Southampton, who led the research, said: “We came upon this by chance, as it was flagged by our search algorithm when we were searching for a type of supernova. “Most supernovae and tidal disruption events only last for a couple of months before fading away. For something to be bright for two plus years was immediately very unusual.” The Southampton-led team believe the most feasible explanation for what caused the explosion is an extremely large cloud of gas (mostly hydrogen) or dust that has come off course from its orbit around the black hole and been sent flying in. Dr Wiseman added: “With new facilities, like the Vera Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time, coming online in the next few years, we are hoping to discover more events like this and learn more about them. “It could be that these events, although extremely rare, are so energetic that they are key processes to how the centres of galaxies change over time.” The findings are published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Additional reporting by agencies Read More Scientists think they have explained a ‘mysterious structure in the universe’ Astronomers spot the largest cosmic explosion ever seen Astronomers see ‘objects that no one has ever seen before’ in incredible observations Astronomers spot the largest cosmic explosion ever seen Astronomers see ‘objects that no one has ever seen before’ in incredible observations ‘Meteorite? shooting star? missile?’: Officials explain strange ‘fireball’ over Japan

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Thousands of Reddit communities are planning a widespread blackout next week that will impact millions of users. The revolt comes in response to proposed charges for third-party app developers, which they claim will make the social media platform inaccessible for a significant proportion of users. On 12 June, many of the site’s biggest subreddits, including r/videos and r/gaming and r/bestof, will go dark for 48 hours in an effort to prevent the new pricing from coming into force. Reddit launched in 2005, but did not develop its own app until 2016. This meant that for the firs decade third-party apps became a popular way to access the platform, with many still preferred over the official app due to the user experience. These third-party apps need an API – which stands for Application Programming Interface – in oder to access the site’s information so that it can display it in the app for users. “Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing,” a popular third-party app called Apollo announced in a post to Reddit. “Bad news for third-party apps, their announced pricing is close to Twitter’s pricing, and Apollo would have to pay Reddit $20 million per year to keep running as is.” According to Apollo, Reddit plans to charge $12,000 for 50 million API requests. “I’m deeply disappointed in this price,” Apollo wrote. “For reference, I pay Imgur (a site similar to Reddit in user base and media) $166 for the same 50 million API calls. “I don’t see how this pricing is anything based in reality or remotely reasonable. I hope it goes without saying that I don’t have that kind of money or would even know how to charge it to a credit card.” The Independent has reached out to Reddit for comment. Despite being owned and operated by Advance Publications, Reddit forums are controlled by volunteer administrators, who have organised the protest. One moderator named Toptomcat wrote in a post that the proposed pricing changes would make it “impossible” to keep operating in the way many Reddit users are used to. “Many subreddits will be going dark to protest this policy,” the user wrote. “Some will return after 48 hours: others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed, since many moderators aren’t able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app.” Read More Reddit founder says 90% of games will pay you to play them in 5 years Reddit boss calls TikTok 'fundamentally parasitic' for its privacy flaws Elon Musk responds to bizarre AI images of him as baby Apple finally fixed one of the most embarrassing things about typing on an iPhone Apple Vision Pro $3,499 VR headset unveiled at WWDC 2023 heralds ‘new era’

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