NASA recently detected a large thermonuclear explosion coming from the location.
The culprit seems to be a foreign pulsar, the space agency reports, which is that the stellar remains of a star that blew up during a supernova but was too small to create a part. NASA spotted the burst because it sent out an intense beam of x-rays that got picked up by the agency's orbital observatory NICER.
All in all, it is a potent reminder: space is a very dangerous, extremely metal place.
The August explosion released in 20 seconds the identical amount of energy our Sun would wish 10 days to unleash, per research published within the Astrophysical Journal Letters last month.
"This burst was outstanding," NASA astrophysicist Peter Bult, who led the research, said in NASA's statement.
"We see a two-step change in brightness, which we expect is caused by the ejection of separate layers from the pulsar surface, and other features that may help us decode the physics of those powerful events."
Astronomers think the thermonuclear explosion was caused by helium that sunk beneath the surface of the pulsar and fused into a ball of carbon.
"Then the helium erupts explosively and unleashes a thermonuclear fireball across the whole pulsar surface," NICER head Zaven Arzoumanian explained.
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