Death by black hole: Astronomers spot flare from “spaghettification” of star

Animation depicting a star experiencing spaghettification as it's sucked in by a supermassive black hole during a "tidal disruption event."

It's a popular misconception that black holes behave like cosmic vacuum cleaners, ravenously sucking up any matter in their surroundings. In reality, only stuff that passes beyond the event horizon-including light-is swallowed up and can't escape, although black holes are also messy eaters. That means that part of an object's matter is actually ejected out in a powerful jet.

If that object is a star, the process of being shredded (or "spaghettified") by the powerful gravitational forces of a black hole occurs outside the event horizon, and part of the star's original mass is ejected violently outward. This in turn can form a rotating ring of matter (aka an accretion disk) around the black hole that emits powerful X-rays and visible light. Those jets are one way astronomers can indirectly infer the presence of a black hole. Now astronomers have recorded the final death throes of a star being shredded by a supermassive black hole in just such a "tidal disruption event" (TDE), described in a new paper published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

"The idea of a black hole 'sucking in' a nearby star sounds like science fiction. But this is exactly what happens in a tidal disruption event," said co-author Matt Nicholl of the University of Birmingham. "We were able to investigate in detail what happens when a star is eaten by such a monster."

Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments