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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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