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 times brighter than the Sun.
00:21The source has been named M82X2, named for the M82 galaxy where the source is emanating from.
00:27Despite having a name and knowing where it's hailing from, experts still aren't sure what it is.
00:31Current laws of astrophysics outline how when an object gets too bright, it will break apart, a 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 up in a sort of galactic tornado,
00:46spinning into a cone with the tip pointing towards Earth, 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 as well,
00:57squishing incoming matter and changing the shape of its atomic structure,
01:01elongating atoms and increasing the star's brightness.
01:05And, of course, I think it's a very powerful thing.
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