A supermassive black hole A new record has been set for the brightest and most distant flare a star can produce, shining with the luminosity of 10 trillion suns at its peak.
This flame came from an active black hole at the center of a galaxy some 10 billion light years far inside spaceLight from the explosion, called J2245+3743, began reaching Earth in 2018, when the Zwicky Transient Facility in California and the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey in Arizona first detected it, Within a few months, the flare’s brightness increased 40 times, making it 30 times stronger than any previous one, black hole flare saw.
The black hole is about 500 million times more massive than SunAstronomers believe the flare is the result of the so-called Tidal Disturbance EventWhen a star gets too close and is torn apart by the black hole’s gravity. In this case, the doomed star is also very large – at least 30 times more massive than the Sun. As its gas swirls inward like water down a drain, the black hole swallows it, releasing a bottomless burst of energy.
Matthew Graham, a Caltech astronomy professor and first author of the study, said the continued glow shows the black hole has not yet finished its meal, comparing the star’s condition to “only half a fish in the whale’s throat.” a statement,
A paper Description of discovered superflare appears in journal nature astronomy,
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Black holes are one of the strangest curiosities of the universe. They are regions where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. About half a century ago, astronomers weren’t even sure these were real. Today, black holes are not just accepted science, they are also getting glamor shots. Event Horizon Telescope achieved first image of a black holeLocated 53 million light years away messier 87 Galaxy, in 2019.
mashable light speed
A black hole erupts when gas, dust, or, in this case, a star gets too close and gravity pulls it apart. As the material falls inward, it heats up and begins to glow before disappearing.
Most such events have been observed to occur around quiescent black holes. But it is an active galactic nucleus, meaning it is already feeding on the surrounding gas. That constant glow has the ability to hide the flames, but the immense power of the event makes it easy to detect.
The previous record holder, ZTF20abrbieie, is estimated to have come from a star only three to 10 times the mass of the Sun.
Follow-up observations confirmed the brightness of the flame. data from NASAThe WISE mission helped eliminate other possible explanations, such as supernova Or known as a cosmic optical illusion gravitational lensingThe glow is visible in visible and infrared light, but not in X-rays, radio waves or neutrinos, ghostly particles that pass through almost everything without interacting, ruling out other types of explosions,
Still, the idea that the destroyed star was 30 times more massive than the Sun makes this interpretation of the data a little hard to believe.
The Zwicky Transient Facility team installs the wide-field camera at the prime focus of the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory in California.
Credit: Caltech Optical Observatories
“Stars this massive are rare,” CUNY co-author Professor Kay Saavik Ford said in a statement, “but we think stars within the disk of (active galactic nuclei) may be larger.” Material from the disk is injected onto the stars, causing them to grow in mass.
Because the galaxy is located so far away, astronomers are observing the event as if it happened a long time ago, when the universe was less than a third of its current age. The flame is still diminishing, slowed by its impact cosmic expansionWhich spans both space and time.
Researchers say the discovery indicates that many more supersized flares await discovery as the next generation of sky surveys is conducted, including Vera C. Rubin Observatorycome online.