Black Hole Shreds Star And Has Moved On To Another Target

Space.com

Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, astronomers have found that a black hole that shredded a star has moved onto a another star or stellar black hole.  Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart

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00:00visit chandra's beautiful universe at 2019 qiz

00:08a massive black hole has torn apart one star and is now using that stellar wreckage to pummel

00:16another star or smaller black hole that used to be in the clear this discovery made with

00:22nasa's chandra x-ray observatory and other telescopes helps astronomers link two mysteries

00:28where there had previously only been hints of a connection in 2019 astronomers witnessed the

00:34signal of a star that got too close to a black hole and was destroyed by the black hole's

00:39gravitational forces once shredded the star's remains began circling the black hole in a disc

00:46in a type of stellar graveyard over a few years however this disc has expanded outward and is

00:53now directly in the path of a star or possibly a stellar mass black hole orbiting the massive

00:58black hole at a previously safe distance the orbiting star is now repeatedly crashing through

01:04the debris disc about once every 48 hours as it circles when it does the collision costs bursts

01:11of x-rays that astronomers captured with chandra like a diver repeatedly going into a pool and

01:18creating a splash every time she enters the water the star striking the disc creates a huge splash of

01:24gas and x-rays as the star orbits around the black hole it does this over and over again scientists have

01:32documented many cases where an object gets too close to a black hole and gets torn apart in a single

01:37burst of light astronomers call these tidal disruption events or tdes in recent years astronomers have also

01:45discovered a new class of bright flashes from the centers of galaxies which are detected only in x-rays

01:51and repeat many times these events are also connected to supermassive black holes but astronomers could

01:57not explain what caused the semi-regular bursts of x-rays they dubbed these quasi-periodic eruptions or qpes

02:05this discovery gives astronomers evidence that tdes and qpes can be different phases of the same phenomenon

02:13in addition to chandra the researchers used nasa's hubble space telescope nicer telescope aboard the

02:19international space station and the neil garrell swift telescope astronomers will continue to look for

02:26more of these events to learn more about how black holes grow and to study the prevalence and distances of

02:31objects in close orbits around massive black holes

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