Scientists Get First Sight of Black Hole Devouring Nearby Star

A group of scientists got first sight of a supermassive black hole devouring a nearby star in a matter of weeks.

The finding, reported in the US journal Science, tracked this unlucky star – about the size of the Sun – as it shifted from its customary path, slipped into the gravitational pull of a supermassive black hole and was sucked in, said lead author Sjoert van Velzen of the Johns Hopkins University.

Previously, astrophysicists had predicted that when a large amount of gas is pulled into a black hole, a fast-moving plasma jet could escape from the rim of the black hold, an area known as the event horizon. Although several studies suggested that when a tidal disruption event happens, we should see a jet, we now have the proof. Scientists have also seen flares, or jets, from supermassive black holes. This galaxy is about 300 million light years away, while the others were at least three times farther away.

The star was disintegrated and created a disk of debris around the black hole prior to its total disappearance into the horizon. The jets then produce energy which equals the energy of our Sun’s output over ten million years.

They concluded that it was likely all supermassive black holes swallowing stars launched jets, but this discovery was made possible because the black hole is relatively close to the Earth and was studied soon after it was first seen.

The black hole was first caught in the act of feasting on the star in December 2014 by Ohio State University’s researchers using an optical telescope in Hawaii.

“The event was first picked up by the All-sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN), and followed up with the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager Large Array, located in Cambridge”, said team member Dr Gemma Anderson, of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research.

Combining data from their telescopes with those from other observatories – monitoring optical, radio and X-ray signals – a global team was able to put together a “multi-wavelength” image of the “cosmic burp”. That helped to confirm that the sudden increase of light from the galaxy was due to a newly trapped star.

“The destruction of a star by a black hole is beautifully complicated, and far from understood”, van Velzen said.

‘From our observations, we learn the streams of stellar debris can organise and make a jet rather quickly, which is valuable input for constructing a complete theory of these events’.