Astronomers capture supermassive black hole as it eats passing star

[riversedge]

Source: cnn




Astronomers capture supermassive black hole as it eats passing star

By James Griffiths, CNN

Updated 10:32 PM ET, Wed July 6, 2016




Rendering shows jets of particles ejected as a star is consumed by a black hole.



(CNN)A star, caught in the grips of a supermassive black hole.
The immense gravity slowly strips the stellar material from its parent, forming a disc of gas around the black hole as it converts gravitational energy into electromagnetic radiation, producing a bright source of light visible on multiple wavelengths.

.....................

See black hole shred passing star 00:57

An international team of astronomers, led by Jun Yang at Sweden's Chalmers University of Technology, used the European VLBI Network (EVN) to study the event known as Swift J1644+57.


First discovered in 2011, Swift J1644+57 is a supermassive black hole slowly swallowing a star. Or rather, was, the galaxy in which the incredible astronomical event is taking place is so far away its light takes 3.9 billion years to reach Earth.

As the ancient star was sucked into the black hole, Yang says it produced jets of light and particles equivalent to the size "of a 2 euro coin on the Moon as seen from Earth." ............

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/06/health/black-hole-star-radio-telescope/index.html

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I am always fascinated by what we are able to know --or not know about about our universes.

[Separation]

1. That's awesome.

[Surya Gayatri]

2. We are born of this star dust...humbling thought.

[GummyBearz]

9. True story

And one that was a big hit with the ladies in my single college years... drop the science behind how we are all made of star dust and move on to second base

[JohnnyRingo]

3. K&R

Thanx for posting.

[Night Watchman]

4. If we CAPTURED it....

...shouldn't we all be dead now?

K&R

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

5. Alerting. This is not Late Breaking News!

Anything that happened 3.9 billion years ago is probably not Late Breaking!

Anyway, thanks for posting. Interesting story and photo.

[NWCorona]

13. Isn't it amazing that something that happened so long ago is just now reaching us

[PersonNumber503602]

18. heheheh you made me laugh.

[Blue_Tires]

6. The good news is that star came out the other side no worse for wear...

[bvar22]

7. What I don't understand:

If the gravity in and around a black hole is so strong that even light can't escape,
how can particles be ejected?

[Separation]

8. From what I understand

Is that even black holes can only absorb so much matter. The star particles that it can't absorb is belched out.

I only know what I'm told by the science discovery channel, so take this info not as gospel.

[cemaphonic]

10. To put in into a somewhat more human and familiar scale, imagine a meteor hurtling towards Earth.

Broadly, there are 3 things that can happen:

1) It could crash into the Earth.

2) If the velocity and trajectory are just right, the meteor will be captured by Earths gravity and go into orbit.

3) If it is coming in fast enough, it will exit Earth's gravitational pull, but its trajectory and velocity will be altered while under Earth's influence. We have used this case several times in our own space program, such as when we used Jupiter's gravity to accelerate the New Horizons probe on its way to Pluto.

Black holes have a gravitational feature known as an "event horizon," which is the point beyond which not even light can escape. Anything entering the event horizon suffers the first fate, which is what you're thinking of. But the gravitational influence of a black hole extends far beyond its event horizon, so a lot of the matter being pulled towards a black hole will either settle into orbit, or be flung away at extremely high velocities (near light speed in some cases).

If it wasn't for all of the matter (and light) being flung away from black holes, we wouldn't be able to detect them - they would remain a purely theoretical construct.

[NWCorona]

15. Quantum mechanics stimulates that if a reaction is possible the opposite is also possible

The best way to describe the theory is this IMHO. The event horizon can affect the production of matching pairs of particles and anti particles. Now imagine them stuck together like magnets. As the gravitational forces ripe them apart picture the negative particle turning and ejecting the positive free.

Other factors are at play like frame dragging so the black hole would actually be spinning.

[rug]

11. Didn't this happen like 7,000,000 years ago?

[riversedge]

12. It-the event- is taking 3.9 billion years for its light to travel to earth. I do not

know how to calculate its age. I always thought that figure was its age? ??


...........First discovered in 2011, Swift J1644+57 is a supermassive black hole slowly swallowing a star. Or rather, was, the galaxy in which the incredible astronomical event is taking place is so far away its light takes 3.9 billion years to reach Earth. ...

[rug]

19. Heh, in astronomical tems it's still LBN.

[riversedge]

20. Clever!

[ChairmanAgnostic]

14. wonder if black holes burp after dining.

Seriously, is there a mathematical limit as to how much a black hole can eat?

[NWCorona]

16. Supposedly the upper limit is 10 billion times the mass of the sun.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

17. the thing about the big bang that always confused me

In the first few seconds there was massive inflation, matter had not yet come to be, but the pressures and temps were beyond imagination.

Why did the galaxies form, rather than one big black hole encompassing all of matter? I am sure that the densities that existed extremely early on were on the same level as what exists at a black hole's event horizon now.

[november3rd]

21. Light Can't Escape From Black Holes

That's why they're called "black."