Print

Black hole ejects massive energy jet after devouring a star

5/5 - (2 votes)

For the first time, scientists have caught a glimpse of a black hole ejecting a hot “flare” of matter after devouring a star the size of our sun. The discovery was made thanks to the quick action of of scientists from John Hopkins University, who worked in conjunction with a team from the University of Oxford. Hubble fellow Sjoert van Velzen from Hopkins heard last year that Ohio State U researchers had spotted a transient star that was caught in the gravitational pull of a black hole some 300 million light years away. In theory, the event (dubbed ASASSN-14li) would result in a “tidal disruption” of the star, resulting in a hot flare burst energy jet emitted by the supermassive black hole.

Scientists, including Velzen, have tried to catch such events before, but were always too late. (The event is not to be confused with an accretion disk jet, the aftermath of a star devoured by a black hole.) The team first confirmed that the event was genuine, then maneuvered quickly to catch the expected radio burst. Black holes are so massive that nothing, including light energy, can escape their gravitation pull. However, scientists have long predicted that if force-fed a large amount of gas from, say, a star, then a fast moving jet of plasma can escape from the so-called event horizon.

After observing the event over a period of several months, and recording bursts of energy across multiple wavelengths, the scientists are now confident that an initial hot burst occurred and that the theory is accurate. “From (these) observations, we learn the streams of stellar debris can organize and make a jet rather quickly, which is valuable input for a complete theory of these events.”

The lack of energy emitted by black holes makes them impossible to image — the picture and video above are from a NASA simulation, for instance. However, there’s another project afoot called the Event Horizon Telescope that could eventually capture the black hole at the center of our own galaxy, so that we can all see something other than “artist’s conception.”

 

Source: John Hopkins University | NASA

NASA | Massive Black Hole Shreds Passing Star

This artist’s rendering illustrates new findings about a star shredded by a black hole. When a star wanders too close to a black hole, intense tidal forces rip the star apart. In these events, called “tidal disruptions,” some of the stellar debris is flung outward at high speed while the rest falls toward the black hole. This causes a distinct X-ray flare that can last for a few years. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, Swift Gamma-ray Burst Explorer, and ESA/NASA’s XMM-Newton collected different pieces of this astronomical puzzle in a tidal disruption event called ASASSN-14li, which was found in an optical search by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) in November 2014. The event occurred near a supermassive black hole estimated to weigh a few million times the mass of the sun in the center of PGC 043234, a galaxy that lies about 290 million light-years away. Astronomers hope to find more events like ASASSN-14li to test theoretical models about how black holes affect their environments.
During the tidal disruption event, filaments containing much of the star's mass fall toward the black hole. Eventually these gaseous filaments merge into a smooth, hot disk glowing brightly in X-rays. As the disk forms, its central region heats up tremendously, which drives a flow of material, called a wind, away from the disk.

Music credit: Encompass by Mark Petrie from Killer Tracks.

This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?12005

You can read more about this at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/destroyed-star-rains-onto-black-hole-winds-blow-it-back.html

Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA's Goddard Shorts HD podcast:
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/iTunes/f...

Or find NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC

Or find us on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard