Death by Black Hole: Astronomers Spot Flare from "Spaghettification" of Star
martyb writes:
Death by black hole: Astronomers spot flare from "spaghettification" of star:
The notion of being "spaghettified" after falling into a black hole was popularized in Stephen Hawking's 1988 best-selling book, A Brief History of Time. Hawking envisioned an unfortunate astronaut who passed beyond the event horizon and would find themselves subject to the intense gravitational gradient of the black hole. (The gravitational gradient is the difference in strength of gravity's pull depending on an object's orientation.)
If the astronaut fell in feet first, for example, the pull would be stronger on the feet than the head. The astronaut would be stretched vertically and compressed horizontally by the black hole's tidal forces until they resembled a strand of spaghetti. [...] At least it would be quick; the whole process would occur in less than a second.
[...] these powerful bursts of light are often shrouded behind a curtain of interstellar dust and debris, making it difficult for astronomers to study them in greater detail. This latest event (dubbed AT 2019qiz) was discovered shortly after the star had been shredded last year, making it easier to study in detail, before that curtain of dust and debris had fully formed. Astronomers conducted follow-up observations across the electromagnetic spectrum over the next six months, using multiple telescopes around the world, including the Very Large Telescope (VLT) array and the New Technology Telescope (NTT), both located in Chile.
"Because 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 velocities up to 10,000 km/s," said co-author Kate Alexander of Northwestern University. "This is a unique 'peek behind the curtain' that provided the first opportunity to pinpoint the origin of the obscuring material and follow in real time how it engulfs the black hole."
According to Berger, these observations provide the first direct evidence that outflowing gas during disruption and accretion produces the powerful optical and radio emissions previously observed. "Until now, the nature of these emissions has been heavily debated, but here we see that the two regimes are connected through a single process," he said.
YouTube video depicting a star being "eaten" by a black hole.
Journal Reference:
Nicholl, M, Wevers, T, Oates, S R, et al. outflow powers the optical rise of the nearby, fast-evolving tidal disruption event AT2019qiz, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staa2824)
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