relativistic jets tagged posts

What happens when a dying star flies too close to a supermassive black hole? Astronomers discover a bright optical flare caused by a dying star’s encounter with a supermassive black hole.

According to University of Maryland astronomer Igor Andreoni, several things happen: first, the star is violently ripped apart by the black hole’s gravitational tidal forces — similar to how the Moon pulls tides on Earth but with greater strength. Then, pieces of the star are captured into a swiftly spinning disk orbiting the black hole. Finally, the black hole consumes what remains of the doomed star in the disk. This is what astronomers call a tidal disruption event (TDE).

But in some extremely rare cases, the supermassive black ho...

Artist’s impression of the V404 Cygni black hole jet. Credit: G Perez Diaz IAC

They are nature’s very own Death Star beams – ultra-powerful jets of energy that shoot out from the vicinity of black holes like deadly rays from the Star Wars super-weapon. Now a team of scientists led by the University of Southampton has moved a step closer to understanding these mysterious cosmic phenomena – known as relativistic jets – by measuring how quickly they ‘switch on’ and start shining brightly once they are launched.

How these jets form is still a puzzle. One theory suggests that they develop within the ‘accretion disc’...