Spaghettification of a Sun-like star by a Supermassive Black hole
Ever since man was evolved, he had this innate quality to gaze at the sky. As time pass mysteries and stories were made out to explain the invisible, and limitless universe beyond our vision. One of the heavenly bodies which always succeeds in grabbing people’s attention is the black hole. There are several rumors and fantasies related to this hungry monster out in space. As time and technology advance, these stories are turning out to be true to some extent. Sucking of surrounding materials and stars by a black hole is no longer regarded as an imaginary tale. It requires excessive effort to explore a phenomenon happening near the tunnel of mystery.
Recently, The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society had published details of a study that reinforced our belief that spaghettification of objects by black hole do exist. This capturing, tearing off and absorption of a heavy mass star into the black hole is technically called tidal disruption. A team of researchers including the lead author of the study, Dr.Matt Nicholl (lecturer and Royal Astronomical Society research fellow at the University of Birmingham, UK and visiting researcher at the University of Edinburgh), Samantha Oates (from the University of Birmingham), and Kate Alexander (NASA Einstein Fellow at Northwestern University in the US ) were excited to share the details about this event.
The Study author Thomas Wevers (ESO Fellow in Santiago, Chile) who was at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, UK, gave us an easy account of the theory of the phenomenon. An ill-fated star roaming around the outskirts of the black hole is wooed by a tremendous gravitational pull from the core of a supermassive black hole and this suction tears the star into thin layer of materials. During this phenomenon, as the thin streams fall into the hole, bright light flares emerge and flash out, which are detectable by satellites.
Last year, ESO had recorded a blast of light from a star which had been ripped and sucked into a supermassive black hole, this tidal disrupting event is known as the AT2019qiz. This is one of the nearest observations recorded till now. When this event took place, the team of researchers pointed ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and ESO’s New Technology Telescope (NTT) situated in Chile at the incoming new flash of light. This early detection made it possible to observe the light beam amidst the dust and debris hindrances surrounding the source. The immediate measurements had given us a peek into the fascinating event.
Kate says, “As we caught it early, we could actually see the curtain of dust and debris being drawn up as the black hole launched a powerful outflow of material with velocity up to 10,000 km/s. This unique ‘peek behind the curtain’ provided the first opportunity to pinpoint the origin of the obscuring material and following in real-time how it engulfs the black hole.”
Continuous exposures and multiple observations of various wavelength ranging from ultraviolet to radio waves were taken by X-shooter and EFOSC2, two powerful instruments on ESO’s VLT and ESO’s NTT. These data revealed the relationship between the light emitted from the source and the material sunken into the core of the black hole. The studies had shown that the captured star was almost the size of our sun which had fallen a prey for the hungry monster. The size of the supermassive black hole is estimated to be billions and millions of the size of our little sun.
Nicholl says, “the idea of a black hole ‘sucking in’ a nearby star sounds like a science fiction. But this is exactly what happens in a tidal disruption event”. Further probing and studies on the data might lead us to discover more interesting facts about the black hole.
Journal reference:
An outflow powers the optical rise of the nearby, fast-evolving tidal disruption event AT2019qiz M Nicholl, T Wevers, SR Oates, K D Alexander, G Leloudas, F Onori, A Jerkstrand, S Gomez, S Campana, I Arcavi, P Charalampopoulos, M Gromadzki, N Ihanec, PG Jonker, A Lawrence, I Mandel, S Schulze, P Short, J Burke, C McCully, D Hiramatsu, D A Howell, C Pellegrino, H Abbot, J P Anderson, E Berger, P K Blanchard, G Cannizzaro, T-W Chen, M Dennefeld, L Galbany, S González-Gaitán, G Hosseinzadeh, C Inserra, I Irani, P Kuin, T Müller-Bravo, J Pineda, NP Ross, R Roy, S J Smartt, K W Smith, B Tucker, Ł Wyrzykowski, D R Young. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 499, Issue 1, November 2020, Pages 482–504, https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa2824 Published: 12 October 2020
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