Overview

• A new paper in Science Advances establishes Extreme Nuclear Transients as a distinct class of cosmic explosion
• These transients release up to 1.5 × 10^52 erg over roughly six months, making them about 1,000 times brighter than typical supernovae
• They arise in galactic centers when a black hole of at least 250 million solar masses disintegrates a 3–10 solar mass star
• ENTs are far rarer than supernovae but remain detectable across vast distances due to their prolonged peak brightness
• Researchers are now mining archival and real-time survey data to find more ENTs and use them to probe early supermassive black hole behavior