Earlier this week, the Indian astrophysicist from Caltech and an IIT Delhi alumni threw the astronomical world into a tizzy by detecting and measuring what is being acknowledged as the biggest cosmic explosion since the Big Bang which created the universe.

So bright and violent was the explosion that scientists say that for about 40 seconds, it appeared to outshine all the rest of the universe. It was so powerful and luminous that in one second it released almost as much energy as all the rest of the universe.

``The energy burst staggers the imagination,'' Dr Kulkarni said at a NASA briefing in Washington on Wednesday, as other awed astrophysicists struggled to come to terms with arguably the biggest cosmic event ever detected. ``This is the greatest documented explosionsince the dawn of man,'' added Stan Woosley, a University of California theorist specialising in astronomical explosions.

Of course, it requires a staggering feat of imagination to comprehend the staggering events that only astrophysicists are capable of relating as if it happened in our backyard.

The cataclysm involving GRB 971214 is described as a gamma ray burster which occurred some 12 billion years ago in the young universe. Essentially it was a primal explosion of an incredibly dense matter that reached temperatures of billions of degrees, somewhat like in the run up to the Big Bang which created the universe.

Assuming the universe itself is 14 billions years old, the Caltech team estimates that the GRB 971214 radiation has been travelling for 80 per cent of the age of the universe. This means the light must have left its source some eight billion years before the Earth formed.

Even accounting for the speed at which light travels (189,000 miles per second or 5.9 trillion miles per year), theevent was only detected on December 14 last year and measured soon after by an international group of scientists led by Dr Kulkarni.

The team is publishing its findings in the latest issue of Nature magazine.As for the energy released, scientists say it would be equal to five billion supernovae, the explosion of dying stars that was hitherto the best documented burst of energy in the universe. If all the nuclear weapons made were exploded in one go, it wouldn't match the fizz and pop of a single supernova. Ten billion years of our Sun's existence has not produced one hundredths of the energy that GRB 971214 released.

As slack-jawed mortals listened in wonderment to this mind-bending numbers and theorising, astrophysicists grappled with the meaning of this 12-billion year old event that showed up before their observatories only a few weeks ago.

``Most of the theoretical models proposed to explain these bursts cannot explain this much energy. However, there are recent models involving rotating black holeswhich can work,'' Dr Kulkarni explained, adding, ``On the other hand, this is such an extreme phenomenon that it is possible we are dealing with something completely unanticipated and even more exotic.'' Yeah, right.

Among the exotic theories that the astro crowd is excitedly discussing is that it could be a black hole swallowing a neutron star. A black hole is a concentration of matter whose gravitational field is Continued on page 7