A black hole it has been observed to emit light equivalent to 1,000 trillion rays Sun. What’s the reason?
This kind of phenomenon has not been seen for more than a decade. Astronomers also received a sudden burst of energy from the very distant center of the galaxy, which is 8.5 billion light-years away, in February.
The light was first detected by the Zwicky Transient Facility, a space research institution, at the Palomar Observatory in California, USA, with flashes of light equivalent to more than 1,000 trillion suns.
“This year, on Valentine’s Day, we ran into a confusion. It was so weird!” said Igor Andreoni of the University of Maryland, quoted by The limit.
The study of these flashes of light is published in a journal entitled ‘A very bright jet from the breakup of a star by a huge black hole‘ written by a team of NASA experts at the University of California and published on November 30th.
At the time, astronomers from around the world pointed their telescopes at the flash of light, watching black hole in X-rays, radio and other wavelengths.
The flare was unusually bright and similar to a gamma-ray burst, a type of bright flash that is usually detected by gamma-ray or X-ray telescopes. The extraordinary brightness of the light led astronomers to conclude that the light must have been caused from the breaking of a star.
A star is said to drift too close to a supermassive black hole at the heart of a galaxy to be crushed by the black hole’s gravitational pull.
“It can really tear a star apart. It really gets pulled and stretched until it can’t be together anymore,” Andreoni said.
Quoted from CNetthese phenomena are called tidal disturbance events, and astronomers have seen dozens of these events in recent years.
This unusual phenomenon causes black holes to create huge bursts of energy, with material ejected from the black hole’s poles at nearly the speed of light.
“We don’t know why, but sometimes very strong explosions of material are thrown when the star is perturbed,” Andreoni said.
To spot dramatic transient events like these, astronomers need telescopes that constantly scan as much of the sky as possible and report sudden changes in brightness.
But there are thousands of brightness changes observed every night, so this mountain of data needs to be refined to bring out the most interesting objects.
Andreoni’s group worked to sift through this data to find very fast events at optical wavelengths.
Further observation is needed to understand the specific event that triggers the lightning. Supernovas, for example, produce bright light for several weeks, which is very fast by astronomical standards.
The group has reported this phenomenon to the international community, encouraging researchers working with telescopes operating at other wavelengths such as radio or X-rays to observe it.
Of the stars ripped apart by the black hole, only about one percent appear to have produced such a powerful ejection. However, researchers aren’t yet sure what causes it.
When the star is pulled apart and its material is pulled towards the black hole, the energy of this matter is converted into light. In theory, the black hole’s magnetic field and spin could move together to send material outward from its poles.
This is the first time such jets have been detected in the visible light portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, also known as the optical wavelength.
Previously, the emission around black holes was detected by observing X-rays, gamma rays and radio waves.
This tells astronomers something about the environment around the black hole, and looking into the optical beam could be a useful way to spot these extreme events in the future.
(can/arh)
