Philip Wiseman

I research the most extreme events in the Universe: exploding stars (supernovae) and giant flares from super-massive black holes. I am an expert in using a particular type of exploding star, known as a "type Ia supernova", to measure distances in the Universe. We can use these to infer the expansion history of the Universe and understand what it is made of.
In 2023 I led the discovery and analysis of the largest cosmic explosion ever detected, AT2021lwx, which was 10 times brighter than any known exploding star. We believe that the extreme luminosity was caused by huge amounts of gas from a giant cloud falling onto a super-massive black hole.