Astronomers have been left by a mysterious event in the distant universe which has been observed to repeatedly explode and is putting out more energy than hundreds of  billions of suns, and has been nicknamed the “Tasmanian Devil”.

Professor John Cooke, from the centre for astrophysics and supercomputing at the school of science at Swinburne University, says experts originally thought the event was a supernova but this theory was quickly debunked.

“Once this thing explodes, and you would think it completely obliterates everything that was there, because this is a crazy strong explosion, but then it exploded again and we thought ‘How can it explode again?'” he told Julie-Anne Sprague.

Press PLAY to hear what experts currently believe it is + why it’s been nicknamed the “Tasmanian Devil”

Image: NASA, ESA, NSF’s NOIRLab, Mark Garlick , Mahdi Zamani.