Supermassive black hole seen eating star for the first ever time
Artist conception of a tidal disruption event (TDE) that happens when a star passes fatally close to a supermassive black hole, which reacts by launching a relativistic jet. (Sophia Dagnello, NRAO/AUI/NSF; NASA, STScI )
Andrew Griffin 15.06.2018
The huge, violent event sees a blast of matter shot across the universe
Scientists have seen the vast blast thrown out by a black hole eating a star for the first ever time.
Researchers have finally watched the formation and expansion of the fast-moving jet of material that is thrown out when a supermassive black hole's gravity grabs a star and tears it apart.
Scientists watched the dramatic event using highly specialised telescopes, which are trained on a pair of colliding galaxies called Arp 299, nearly 150 million light-years from Earth. At the centre of one of those galaxies, a star twice the size of the Sun came too close to a black hole that is more than 20 million times big as our Sun – and was shredded apart, throwing a blast across the universe.
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