Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.
An illustration shows the aftermath of a black hole shredding and devouring a star in a tidal disruption eventAstronomers have spotted the closest visible-light example yet of a supermassive black hole ripping apart and devouring a star. The scientists, who hail from the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, discovered the stellar murder, referred to as a, or TDE, when they spotted the sudden brightening and rapid fading of the barred spiral galaxy within which it occurred.
The immense gravitational forces of these monstrous black holes generate huge tidal forces that squeeze the doomed stars horizontally while also stretching them vertically. This turns the stars into cosmic noodles of stellar material that wrap around supermassive black holes like spaghetti on a fork. After this process, aptly called"," each destroyed star is gradually fed to the supermassive black hole.
"This discovery suggests that black holes ripping stars apart nearby could be more common than previously thought — we just haven’t witnessed it happening frequently," Hoogendam. This TDE brightened over the course of just 15 days and then rapidly dimmed, making it around twice as fast as other TDEs. Additionally, it produced much less energy than other TDES. This marks it out as part of a category of events called"low luminosity and fast TDEs."Join our Space Forums
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