tidal disruption event tagged posts

A distant supermassive black hole has set a new cosmic record, unleashing the brightest flare ever seen as it devoured a gigantic star that wandered too close. A colossal black hole 10 billion light-years away has been caught devouring one of the universe’s biggest stars, unleashing a flare 30 times brighter than any seen before. The flare, detected by Caltech’s ZTF, likely marks a tidal disruption event — when a star is shredded by a black hole’s gravity.

The Universe’s most massive stars typically end their lives in spectacular explosions known as supernovae before collapsing into black holes. But one enormous star seems to have met a very different fate...

An intermediate-mass black hole lurking undetected in a dwarf galaxy revealed itself to astronomers when it gobbled up an unlucky star that strayed too close...

While black holes and toddlers don’t seem to have much in common, they are remarkably similar in one aspect: Both are messy eaters, generating ample evidence that a meal has taken place.

But whereas one might leave behind droppings of pasta or splatters of yogurt, the other creates an aftermath of mind-boggling proportions. When a black hole gobbles up a star, it produces what astronomers call a “tidal disruption event...

On Sept. 9, 2018, astronomers spotted a flash from a galaxy 860 million light years away. The source was a supermassive black hole about 50 million times the mass of the sun. Normally quiet, the gravitational giant suddenly awoke to devour a passing star in a rare instance known as a tidal disruption event. As the stellar debris fell toward the black hole, it released an enormous amount of energy in the form of light.

Researchers at MIT, the European Southern Observatory, and elsewhere used multiple telescopes to keep watch on the event, labeled AT2018fyk...