Mystery X-ray flashes beamed towards Earth before vanishing just 24 hours later, leaving scientists to investigate the source. The phenomenon, which stemmed from a galaxy 10.7 billion lightyears away, was captured by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Initial findings suggest it came from a "completely new type of cataclysmic event". A NASA spokesman said: "A mysterious flash of X-rays has been discovered by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory in the deepest X-ray image ever obtained. "This source likely comes from some sort of destructive event in space, but may be of a variety that scientists have never seen before." Report co-author Kevin Schawinski, of ETH Zurich in Switzerland, said: "We may have observed a completely new type of cataclysmic event. “Whatever it is, a lot more observations are needed to work out what we’re seeing.”

GETTY NASA is not certain what caused the event to happen.

NASA A still Image of CDF-S transient.

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Franz Bauer of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in Santiago said: "Ever since discovering this source, we’ve been struggling to understand its origin. “It’s like we have a jigsaw puzzle but we don’t have all of the pieces.” The X-ray source, located in a region of the sky known as the Chandra Deep Field-South (CDF-S), has remarkable properties. Prior to October 2014, this source was not detected in X-rays, but then it erupted and became at least a factor of 1,000 brighter in a few hours. After about a day, the source had faded completely below the sensitivity of Chandra. Thousands of hours of legacy data from the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes helped determine that the event likely came from a faint, small galaxy about 10.7 billion lightyears from Earth. For a few minutes, the X-ray source produced a thousand times more energy than all the stars in this galaxy.

We may have observed a completely new type of cataclysmic event. Kevin Schawinski

Two of the three main possibilities to explain the X-ray source invoke gamma-ray burst (GRB) events. GRBs are jetted explosions triggered either by the collapse of a massive star or by the merger of a neutron star with another neutron star or a black hole. If the jet is pointing towards the Earth, a burst of gamma rays is detected. As the jet expands, it loses energy and produces weaker, more isotropic radiation at X-ray and other wavelengths. Possible explanations for the CDF-S X-ray source, according to the researchers, are a GRB that is not pointed toward Earth, or a GRB that lies beyond the small galaxy. A third possibility is that a medium-sized black hole swallowed a white dwarf star. Co-author Ezequiel Treister, also of the Pontifical Catholic University, said: "None of these ideas fits the data perfectly. “But then again, we’ve rarely if ever seen any of the proposed possibilities in actual data, so we don’t understand them well at all.”

Amazing Hubble Space Images Mon, March 27, 2017 These stunning images from the Hubble Space Telescope are taken from the April 2015 issue of National Geographic Magazine. Play slideshow AFP/Getty Images 1 of 15 Bubble Nebula, also known as NGC 7653, which is an emission nebula located 11 000 light-years away