You're looking at the most powerful X-ray blast ever recorded. You can be thankful we've an atmosphere. This thing was so strong that—even 5 billion light-years away—it overwhelmed the Swift observatory's instruments. Nobody knows what it really was.
The Swift mission's chief scientist David Burrows, at Pennsylvania State University, is bewildered by the findings.
[The software] basically threw up its hands and said, 'Something must be wrong, because the data doesn't make sense.' We're very puzzled – we don't understand it yet. Every once in a while something comes along that's completely unexpected and this is one of them.
The explosion only lasted a few seconds—with Swift receiving 143,000 X-ray photons per second—but the glow continued for 10 minutes after that.
Astronomers don't know exactly what's the origin, so here are my scientific guesses: a) The Kree and the Skrull finally annihilated each other using twin versions of the Ultimate Nullifier; b) Klaatoo bought himself a new camera; c) Galactus has some serious intestinal problems.
Alternatively, they think it may be the collapsing of a giant star to form a massive black hole.
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