Scientists watch a black hole devour a star

After observing more such events, the scientists say that they might be able to further their understanding of the process which allowed black holes to launch spectacular outflows like this. They are notorious for breaking the usual laws of physics in the universe and bending or even distorting space and time.

An worldwide team of astrophysicists led by a Johns Hopkins University scientist has for the first time witnessed a black hole swallowing a star and ejecting a flare of matter moving at almost the speed of light.

Led by Sjoet van Velzen, a Hubble fellow at Johns Hopkins University, the researchers published their findings in the journal Science. So, when researchers noticed an abrupt spike in activity around the black hole back in 2014, they knew they were about to watch something special. They ruled that out and determined the sudden increase of light was from a new star being devoured by the black hole.

The researchers hope they’ll be able to catch more black hole burps in progress, so they can figure out the exact mechanism behind the purge.

The researchers were tracking a star that was akin to our sun in size as it was sucked from its natural path into the orifice of a supermassive black hole.

The first observation of the star being destroyed was made by a team at the Ohio State University, using an optical telescope in Hawaii.

Supermassive black holes are thought to lie at the center of the majority of massive galaxies.

However, this was the first time that astronomers got a clear view of this stellar destruction and the flare that followed, said van Veizen.

Van Velzen, who headed the analysis, said, “These events are extremely rare”. They were just in time to catch the action, and the team was able to witness the event from a range of satellites and telescopes, creating a picture of the event in X-ray, radio, and optical signals.

In space terms, “front row seats” is a galaxy about 300 million light years away.

The black hole that the researches studied was relative small and weak as far as black holes are concerned, but it is also still big enough to completely consumer a star. “From our observations, we learn the streams of stellar debris can organize and make a jet rather quickly, which is valuable input for constructing a complete theory of these events”.

“These jets are a unique tool for probing supermassive black holes”, said co-author Dr Morgan Fraser of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy.