Astronomers have discovered the largest explosion in the universe--one that has endured for more than 100 million years and generated as much energy as hundreds of millions of gamma-ray bursts. The source of this mayhem? An apparently insatiable supermassive black hole.

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory revealed the eruption, located in a galaxy cluster known as MS 0735.6 + 7421. Specifically, the Chandra images show two cavities, each some 650,000 light-years across, that were scoured out by jets of energy emanating from the black hole, which itself may be a billion times the mass of our sun. Announcing the findings today in the journal Nature, Brian McNamara of Ohio University and his colleagues posit that this enormous release of energy occurred as matter fell into the black hole: most was gobbled up, but some was spewed back out rather violently.

The discovery is unexpected not only because of its record-breaking nature, but because previous work suggested that large black holes don't consume as much matter or grow as quickly as small ones do. "This new result is as surprising as it is exciting," comments co-author Paul Nulsen of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "This black hole is feasting when it should be fasting." --Kate Wong

Visiting with U.S. troops in Baghdad on Thursday, failed presidential candidate John Kerry trashed Commander-in-chief George Bush for making "horrendous judgments" and "unbelievable blunders" that have undermined the war effort.

In a series of demoralizing comments first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, the defeated Democrat griped, "What is sad about what's happening here now is that so much of it is a process of catching up from the enormous miscalculations and wrong judgments made in the beginning."

Kerry said that because of the Bush administration's mistakes, "the job has been made enormously harder."

Among the errors cited by the disgruntled Democrat: the decision by former U.S. occupation leader Paul Bremer's to disband the Iraqi army and purge the government of former members of Hussein's Baath Party.

Both moves were have fueled the Sunni insurgency, he claimed, lamenting, "Mistakes have been made."

Then, perhaps sensing he'd gone too far, the 2008 White House hopeful cut short the Bush-bashing, saying, "Now, it's a different time and different set of judgments that have to be made. I'm here to make judgments about what moves are available to us."