Astronomers Capture Black Hole Crusher Star in Strands of Spaghetti

• Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory observed a black hole sucking up a distant star, tearing it into fine strands of stellar material.
• This process, known as “spaghetti”, occurs due to the powerful gravitational force of black holes.
• At 215 million light-years away, this spaghetti process is the closest ever observed by astronomers.
• Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.

Astronomers have captured a little-seen event: a flash of light caused by a black hole devouring a nearby star like spaghetti.

Observed in the constellation Eridanus, about 215 million light years from Earth, the star’s destruction is the closest event astronomers have observed.

“When an unfortunate star gets too close to a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy, the extreme gravitational pull of the black hole destroys the star in thin streams of material,” said study author Thomas Wevers, a fellow at the European Southern Observatory. . in Santiago, Chile, said in a press release about the discovery.

This process is called a tidal disruption event or, more colloquially, “spaghetti,” a nod to the long, thin strands that a star becomes as the black hole’s gravity stretches it further and further.

When these strands are sucked into the black hole, they release a powerful flare of energy that astronomers can detect, even hundreds of millions of light years away.

The researchers studied the dying star over a six-month period, using tools such as ESO’s Very Large Telescope and its New Technology Telescope, and published their findings in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Examining spaghetti in ‘unprecedented detail’

The research team discovered the star shortly after it began to break apart and observed it through ultraviolet, optical, X-ray and radio wavelengths. The combination of the star’s proximity and timing allowed astronomers to study it in “unprecedented detail,” according to the press release.

Despite the fact that a spaghetti star releases a flare of bright energy, researchers have often had trouble in the past examining such flares because dust and debris obscure them. Now they know that the waste comes from the spaghetti process itself.

“We found that when a black hole devours a star, it can launch a powerful blast of material outward that obstructs our view,” said Samantha Oates, an astronomer at the University of Birmingham and a co-author of the study, in the news release. .

In other words, as the black hole devours the star, it releases energy that spews chunks of star debris outward.

The team also estimated the size of the dying star: it was roughly the mass of our own Sun, which is 2 × 10.³⁰ kg, or about 330,000 Earths.

At the end of the study period, “he lost about half of that to the monstrous black hole, which is more than a million times more massive,” Matt Nicholl, a researcher at the Royal Astronomical Society at the University of Birmingham and lead author of the study said in the press release.

In the future, astronomers hope that their detailed observations of this spaghetti star can help future researchers demystify similar events and, in doing so, help us learn more about how black holes and matter interact.