The Sun is the brightest thing around, but many cosmic objects can be much brighter. And in fact, astronomers at NASA have just clocked something in deep space that’s so bright, they say it defies the laws of physics.
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00:00The Sun is the brightest thing around, but many cosmic objects can be much, much brighter.
00:09In fact, astronomers at NASA have just clocked something in deep space that's so bright,
00:13they say it defies the laws of physics.
00:15They're calling it an ultra-luminous X-ray source, and they say it's around 10 million
00:19times brighter than the Sun.
00:21The source has been named M82X2, named for the M82 galaxy where the source is emanating
00:26from.
00:27But despite having a name and knowing where it's hailing from, experts still aren't sure
00:30what it is.
00:31Current laws of astrophysics outline how when an object gets too bright, it will break apart,
00:35a theory called the Eddington Limit.
00:37But this source would thwart that disintegration threshold.
00:40Astronomers initially believed it could be some massive cosmic wind that had been trapped
00:44up in a sort of galactic tornado, spinning into a cone with the tip pointing towards
00:48Earth, focusing the light.
00:49But now they say it more likely has to do with a mega-dense pulsating neutron star,
00:53explaining that it could be a super-strong magnetic field, firing out from that star
00:57as well, squishing incoming matter and changing the shape of its atomic structure, elongating
01:02atoms and increasing the star's brightness.