00:00The Sun is the brightest thing around, but many cosmic objects can be much, much brighter.
00:09In fact, astronomers at NASA have just clocked something in deep space that's so bright,
00:13they say it defies the laws of physics.
00:15They're calling it an ultra-luminous X-ray source, and they say it's around 10 million
00:19times brighter than the Sun.
00:21The source has been named M82X2, named for the M82 galaxy where the source is emanating
00:26from.
00:27But despite having a name and knowing where it's hailing from, experts still aren't sure
00:30what it is.
00:31Current laws of astrophysics outline how when an object gets too bright, it will break apart,
00:35a theory called the Eddington Limit.
00:37But this source would thwart that disintegration threshold.
00:40Astronomers initially believed it could be some massive cosmic wind that had been trapped
00:44up in a sort of galactic tornado, spinning into a cone with the tip pointing towards
00:48Earth, focusing the light.
00:49But now they say it more likely has to do with a mega-dense pulsating neutron star,
00:53explaining that it could be a super-strong magnetic field, firing out from that star
00:57as well, squishing incoming matter and changing the shape of its atomic structure, elongating
01:02atoms and increasing the star's brightness.
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