Black hole discovered by NASA
2022.11.30 12:34
Black hole discovered by NASA
Budrigannews.com – A black hole tearing apart a star that got too close to this cosmic savage has been observed by astronomers more than halfway across the known universe. However, this was not your typical instance of a hungry black hole.
According to the researchers, it was one of only four examples of a black hole that was observed tearing apart a passing star in what is known as a tidal disruption event and then launching luminous jets of high-energy particles in opposite directions into space.
This was the first time this had been observed since 2011.Additionally, it was the brightest and farthest such event ever recorded.
In studies published on Wednesday in Nature and Nature Astronomy, astronomers described the event.
A supermassive black hole about 8.5 billion light years away from Earth, estimated to be hundreds of millions of times the mass of our sun, appears to be the cause.Light travels 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers) per year, or a light year.
Lead author of one of the studies, astronomer Igor Andreoni of the University of Maryland and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, stated, “We think that the star was similar to our sun, perhaps more massive but of a common kind.”
Using a camera attached to a telescope at the Palomar Observatory in California, the astronomical survey known as the Zwicky Transient Facility, the occurrence was observed in February. The Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile was used to calculate the distance.
According to University of Minnesota astronomer and study co-author Michael Coughlin, “when a star dangerously approaches a black hole – no worries, this will not happen to the sun – it is violently ripped apart by the black hole’s gravitational tidal forces – similar to how the moon pulls tides on Earth but with greater strength.”
“Then, pieces of the star are captured into a swiftly spinning disk orbiting the black hole.” (See animation of tidal disruption event) Finally, the doomed star in the disk is consumed by the black hole.”When the tidal disruption event occurs, powerful jets of material are launched in opposite directions in some very rare cases, which we estimated to be 100 times more rare,” Coughlin added.
According to Andreoni and Coughlin, the black hole was probably spinning quickly, which could help explain how the two powerful jets flew into space at almost light speed.
The other study’s lead author, astronomer Dheeraj Pasham of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, stated that the researchers were able to observe the event very early on, within a week of the black hole beginning to eat the dying star.
Jet-making tidal disruptions are extremely uncommon, despite the fact that researchers occasionally observe them.A phenomenon known as “Doppler boosting” that is analogous to the amplified sound of a passing police siren makes one of the jets coming from this black hole appear to be pointing toward Earth, making it appear brighter than if it were traveling in a different direction.
Similar to how the Milky Way and most galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers, it is hypothesized that the supermassive black hole can be found in the center of a galaxy. However, the brightness of the tidal disruption event obscured the galaxy’s starlight.
Pasham stated, “At its peak, the source appeared to be brighter than 1,000 trillion suns.”
