Rising from a past billions of years ago and captured by telescopes, the Camel shows its formidable power by exploding and tearing apart an entire galaxy.
A rare astronomical entity has just been analyzed by a unique project led by the University of California, Berkeley: it is an extreme cosmic event, resembling a particularly horrific explosion, which may represent the moment of birth of a black hole or neutron star – two forms of “monsters” in the universe.
Portrait of “Camel”, a galaxy-tearing monster – (Graphic image from the University of California, Berkeley)
According to Live Science, the first signals were detected in October 2020 with a bright blue hue in telescopes, indicating an explosion with extremely rapid, super-fast, and super-powerful evolution.
The event has been named “Camel”. A similar explosion was detected in 2018, located 200 million light-years from Earth, named “The Bull”, while another explosion in 2020 was dubbed “Koala”, all of which are puns based on their scientific names. Camel’s original name is ZTF20acigmel).
Explosions are common in the universe, but super-fast and super-powerful events like Camel are extremely rare. Unlike supernova explosions – the death of a star – which occur over the course of years; Camel appeared and vanished within weeks.
However, its power is terrifying. While supernovae have been linked to mass extinctions on Earth due to emitting countless harmful cosmic rays, the Camel explosion was so powerful that it tore apart a galaxy and its surrounding space.
Fortunately, it is located billions of light-years away from us. Thus, Camel is also an ancient entity from billions of years ago, as it takes that long for its image to reach the telescopes of Earth.
Scientists hope that observing Camel will allow people on Earth to witness the birth of a monstrous black hole or a neutron star.
