A group of scientists have observed a never-before-seen energetic flare emanating from a supermassive black hole, apparently caused when it ripped apart and engulfed a huge star that got too close.
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology stated that the flare, at its peak, was 10 trillion times brighter than the Sun. It originated from a black hole with a mass approximately 300 million times that of the Sun, located in a distant galaxy, about 11 billion light years from Earth.
A light year is the distance that light travels in one year: 9.5 billion kilometers.
Black holes are extraordinarily dense objects with a gravitational pull so strong that not even light can escape. Most galaxies are believed to have one at their center. The black hole in this research is extremely massive, much more, for example, than the one found at the center of our Milky Way, which has approximately four million times the mass of the Sun.
The researchers said the most likely explanation for the flash is that a large star is being pulled toward the black hole. As matter from the already unfortunate star falls inward, it causes a flash of energy as it reaches the black hole’s point of no return.
Scientists believe the star was at least 30 times, and perhaps up to 200 times, the mass of the Sun. It is possible that it was part of a population of stars orbiting near the black hole and was somehow pushed too close due to an interaction with another object in the vicinity, they explained.
“It seems reasonable to think that it was involved in a collision with another more massive body in its original orbit around the supermassive black hole, which essentially launched it towards it,” said astronomer Matthew Graham, lead author of the study published this Tuesday in the journal Nature Astronomy.
“It was placed into a much more elliptical orbit, which put it much closer to the supermassive black hole at its closest point – too close, it turned out,” Graham added.
Supermassive black holes are surrounded by a disk of gas and dust that is attracted inward after being trapped by its gravitational force.
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“Be that as it may, the star got close enough to the supermassive black hole to ‘spaghettize,’ that is, stretch out until it became long and thin due to the black hole’s gravity, which intensifies as it gets too close to it. That material then spiraled around the supermassive black hole as it fell into its interior,” explained astronomer and study co-author KE Saavik Ford, of City University’s Manhattan District Center for Graduate Studies and Community College. from New York.
The flash would be the result of the gas from the shattered star heating up and glowing as it fell into oblivion. The star believed to have been involved was unusually large.
“Stars of this magnitude are extraordinarily rare, both because smaller ones are born more frequently than massive ones, and because very massive ones have very short lives,” Ford explained.
Researchers suspect that stars orbiting near a supermassive black hole may increase their mass by attracting some of the material orbiting it, making them abnormally large.
Scientists observed the flash with telescopes in California, Arizona and Hawaii. They considered other possible causes, such as the explosion of a star at the end of its life, a jet of material emanating from the black hole or a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, which could have made a weaker event appear more powerful. None of these scenarios fit the data.
Because of the time it takes for light to travel, when astronomers observe distant events like this, they are looking back in time, to an earlier era of the universe.
The flare increased in brightness 40 times during the observations, apparently as more and more material from the star fell into the black hole, and peaked in June 2018. It was 30 times more luminous than any other black hole flare previously observed. It still continues, although its luminosity decreases, and the entire process is expected to last about 11 years.
“The flash is still fading,” Graham noted.
With information from Reuters
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