A massive star has been torn apart and gradually consumed by a black hole in a spectacular event that scientists compared to "preparing a snack for lunch." Astronomers around the world observed the extreme encounter, and the event was presented at the AAS conference in Phoenix, Arizona. Researchers described the star as being "torn up" as the immense gravity of the black hole pulled it apart and consumed its material piece by piece. Associate Professor of Astrophysics Daniel Perley, of Liverpool John Moores University, is the lead author of a paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
He told the conference: "We discovered what we think is a black hole merging with a massive companion star, shredding it into a disk that feeds the black hole. It's a rare and awe-inspiring phenomenon." The destruction produced one of the most powerful cosmic events ever recorded. For a brief period, the energy being released reached roughly 400 billion times the output of Earth's Sun, surpassing even the most powerful supernovae known to astronomers.
Astronomers have previously observed black holes apparently consuming stars in events known as Tidal Disruption Events. However, researchers had never seen one take place on a scale like this. Anna Ho, an assistant professor of astronomy at Cornell University and a coauthor with Perley on the paper, identified the remarkable event soon after its light arrived at Earth.
Using the Zwicky Transient Facility at Palomar Observatory in California, she detected the object, formally designated AT2024wpp and nicknamed the Whippet. Researchers quickly suspected that the phenomenon could be a Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient (LFBOT), a rare and poorly understood type of visible cosmic event linked to the destruction of stars. Within a day, observations from the Liverpool Telescope in the Canary Islands and NASA's Swift satellite in space showed that the object displayed the expected characteristics of an LFBOT.
It appeared extremely blue and was producing X-rays. Distance measurements supplied by coauthors R. Michael Rich at UCLA and Yu Jing Qin at Caltech showed that the transient was releasing far more energy than an ordinary supernova.
Combined with other observations, including its exceptionally high temperature, the measurements led the researchers to conclude that they were witnessing a star being ripped apart and swallowed by a black hole. "Even though we suspected what it was, it was still extraordinary," added Perley. "This was many times more energetic than any similar event and more than any known explosion powered by the collapse of a star.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
