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- A distant black hole is sucking in a star that has gotten too close for comfort.
- The event was detected by a pair of telescopes at the European Southern Observatory and suggests a process called “spaghetti”.
- The star and the black hole are hundreds of millions of light years from Earth, so the event poses no threat at all in our cosmic neighborhood.
Black holes are incredibly powerful forces of nature. They suck on anything that gets too close, including light, which makes them ridiculously intriguing and very, very mysterious. Nothing is exempt from the intense gravitational pull of a black hole, and that includes stars. When a star becomes too comfortable with a black hole, it can completely break apart, decay, and completely destroy itself. Or the black hole can turn the star into spaghetti. Not seriously.
As the researchers describe in a new article published in Monthly Notices from the Royal Astronomical Society, an event labeled AT2019qiz is in fact a star slowly absorbed by a nearby black hole. Basically, the star is being stretched by the gravitational pull of the black hole, turning it into a thin band of stellar matter that flows directly into the black hole.
It’s pretty wild stuff, and it gets even wilder when you review the simulation the researchers produced to give non-scientists an idea of exactly what is going on. Check it out:
“This animation shows a star experiencing spaghetti when absorbed by a supermassive black hole during a ‘tidal disruption event,'” the researchers write. “In a new study, conducted with the help of ESO’s Very Large Telescope and ESO’s New Technology Telescope, a team of astronomers discovered that when a black hole devours a star, it can launch a powerful explosion of material outward.
As you can see, the stellar material forms an intense disk around the black hole. This area where debris collects around a black hole is called an accretion disk. It is filled with gas and other material that is slowly creeping into the black hole. When a black hole sucks in a star, it can shoot an intense amount of material into space. These jets of material have been detected before, although with our limited observations of nearby black holes we have to rely on simulations to get a clear picture of the process.
The good news, at least when it comes to the survival of the human race, is that this incredibly volatile black hole situation is occurring at a distance of 215 million light years. It will not affect us in any way, so you can sleep soundly. That is Pretty cool to see though, you have to admit.
Mike Wehner has reported on technology and video games for the past decade, covering the latest news and trends in virtual reality, wearable devices, smartphones, and future technology. Most recently, Mike served as a technology editor at The Daily Dot and has been featured in USA Today, Time.com, and many other print and web media. His love of reporting is second only to his addiction to games.
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