Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, astronomers have found that a black hole that shredded a star has moved onto a another star or stellar black hole.
Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart
Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00Visit Chandra's Beautiful Universe. AT2019QIZ
00:09A massive black hole has torn apart one star and is now using that stellar wreckage to
00:16pummel another star, or smaller black hole, that used to be in the clear.
00:21This discovery, made with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, helps
00:26astronomers link two mysteries where there had previously only been hints of a connection.
00:31In 2019, astronomers witnessed the signal of a star that got too close to a black hole
00:37and was destroyed by the black hole's gravitational forces.
00:41Once shredded, the star's remains began circling the black hole in a disk in a type
00:46of stellar graveyard. Over a few years, however, this disk has expanded
00:52outward and is now directly in the path of a star, or possibly a stellar mass black hole,
00:58orbiting the massive black hole at a previously safe distance.
01:02The orbiting star is now repeatedly crashing through the debris disk, about once every
01:0648 hours, as it circles. When it does, the collision costs bursts of X-rays that astronomers
01:13captured with Chandra. Like a diver repeatedly going into a pool
01:18and creating a splash every time she enters the water, the star striking the disk creates
01:23a huge splash of gas and X-rays. As the star orbits around the black hole, it does this
01:29over and over again. Scientists have documented many cases where an object gets too close
01:35to a black hole and gets torn apart in a single burst of light.
01:39Astronomers call these tidal disruption events, or TDEs. In recent years, astronomers have
01:45also discovered a new class of bright flashes from the centers of galaxies, which are detected
01:50only in X-rays and repeat many times. These events are also connected to supermassive
01:55black holes, but astronomers could not explain what caused the semi-regular bursts of X-rays.
02:02They dubbed these quasi-periodic eruptions, or QPEs. This discovery gives astronomers
02:08evidence that TDEs and QPEs can be different phases of the same phenomenon.
02:13In addition to Chandra, the researchers used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, NICER Telescope
02:19aboard the International Space Station, and the Neil Gerl Swift Telescope. Astronomers
02:24will continue to look for more of these events to learn more about how black holes grow and
02:29to study the prevalence and distances of objects in close orbits around massive black holes.
02:43NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology