This black hole’s jet is already a trillion Death Stars strong. Scientists say it won’t peak until 2027. | News World

In 2018, a supermassive black hole about 665 million light-years away ripped a passing star apart. At the time, it was “the most boring, garden-variety event,” one researcher recalled. Years later, the same object, AT2018hyz, has become an extreme late-time radio source, with its 5–7 GHz flux climbing from about 1.4 mJy to 33.3 mJy between 972 and 2160 days after the disruption. A new Astrophysical Journal study finds the brightening follows a steep power law, and models suggest the light curve could start turning over at some radio frequencies as soon as early 2027, depending on whether the emission comes from a delayed spherical outflow or a highly…