(Our happy-hour fact to amaze your drinking buddies with.)

A massive star 7.9 billion light years from Earth has exploded, becoming the most distant visible object on record.

The titanic explosion was recently detected by a NASA satellite. It's more than 7 billion miles farther away than the previous most distant visible object, the galaxy M33. If the explosion had happened in our galaxy it would have shined brighter than the sun for more than a minute.

The bright shining light (known as a "gamma-ray burst") is a by-product of a supernova explosion. It occurred when an enormous distant star ran out of nuclear fuel, collapsed into a black hole and released intense bursts of particles toward our fragile little planet.

Rumors that four NASA astronauts who were caught in the path of the gamma-ray explosion have since developed the ability to fly, become invisible and/or stretch their bodies at will was not confirmed as of press time.