A record-breaking black-hole flare, nicknamed Superman, illuminated a previously unseen level of power, emitting a superflare more than 10 trillion times brighter than the Sun and representing the most luminous light burst ever detected from a black hole.

Scientists remain unsure about the exact destruction mechanism, with a leading scenario involving a chaotic encounter that flung a star into a near-miss with the black hole.

Published in Nature Astronomy, the findings shed light on how supermassive black holes interact with their galactic environments and how such extremes form in the early universe.

The study was led by Matthew Graham of Caltech, and the results appear in Nature Astronomy on November 4, 2025.

Discovery and analysis benefited from the Zwicky Transient Facility and the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey at Palomar Observatory, with initial recognition of significance in 2023 after distance calculations.

The team emphasizes that this discovery relied on long-term survey data, and ongoing observations will help determine how common ultra-bright TDEs are across the universe.

Early observations in 2018 were inconclusive, but 2023 spectra from Keck Observatory revealed extraordinary brightness; infrared data from WISE helped rule out relativistic beaming as the cause.

Time dilation near the event horizon allows the event to be observed over years from Earth, enabling long-term study via surveys like ZTF, with future observations anticipated from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

Observations were conducted at Palomar Observatory in California, with Caltech’s Matthew Graham leading the work and noting initial skepticism about energy measurements.

Experts stress the importance of distinguishing TDEs from intrinsic AGN variability and view this event as a key data point for understanding tidal disruption physics and AGN environments.

Independent experts, including Joseph Michail of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, highlight the event’s significance for understanding galactic nuclei and black hole activity.

Researchers suggest stars in AGN disks can grow larger via accretion, enabling such colossal tidal disruption events, and anticipate finding more with ongoing ZTF monitoring and Rubin Observatory data.