Space
1,000 TRILLION times brighter than suns: Star ‘squeezed like a toothpaste tube’ by supermassive black hole
A star being “squeezed like a toothpaste tube” by a supermassive black hole has produced a mysteriously brilliant flash that emitted more light than 1,000 TRILLION suns, according to research.
A mysteriously brilliant flash in the sky was caused by a supermassive black hole “squeezing” a distant star like a toothpaste tube, according to research.
When astronomers at the Zwicky Transient Facility in California spotted a flash in February that produced more light than a trillion suns, they were stunned.
A tidal disruption event (TDE), in which a star gets a little too close to a black hole and is ripped apart by its gravitational pull, is now the cause of the light, the research team says.
It is the brightest TDE ever seen from Earth and has been described as one of the most violent events in the cosmos, with temperatures exceeding 30,000°C (54,000°F).
The event, AT2022cmc, was the most distant TDE ever discovered, occurring more than eight billion light-years away, or more than halfway across the universe.
Its data collection could provide new insights into the growth and nutritional needs of supermassive black holes.
A “jetted TDE,” or flash of light, was first seen during a regular all-sky scan and was later determined to be the source of the flash.
After the star was obliterated, a stream of material extending along the spin axis of the black hole was shot out at nearly the speed of light.
The X-ray energy released was absorbed by the dust surrounding the black hole and then re-emitted as infrared radiation, radio waves, and visible light.
Despite being so far away, the jet’s remarkable brightness and orientation toward Earth allowed instruments around the world to capture it in incredible detail.
These included the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and the Liverpool Telescope in Spain.
We have only seen a small number of these jetted TDE’s and they remain highly exotic and poorly understood phenomena,” said Nial Tanvir of the University of Leicester, who worked on the research.
After the star was annihilated, a stream of matter extending along the spin axis of the black hole shot out of it at nearly the speed of light. This produced X-rays that were absorbed by the dust surrounding the black hole and then re-emitted as infrared radiation, radio waves and visible light.
A co-author from Liverpool John Moores University, Dr. Daniel Perley, called AT2022cmc a type of TDE that is “extraordinary” and “does not seem to fit any known type of celestial source.
Most explosions are either much faster, much slower, or much bluer than statistics would suggest, he said.
The star is often torn apart by strong gravitational forces, becoming a superheated disk of gas that eventually disappears into the black hole.
But in this case, something happened that ejected matter back into space almost as fast as light.
We compare it to a tube of toothpaste that has been unexpectedly squeezed in the middle, causing the toothpaste to come out of both ends.
The powerful optical, radio, and X-ray emission is then produced as the material interacts with the surrounding atmosphere.
According to co-author and MIT astronomer Dr. Dheeraj Pasham, the study team was able to “capture this event at the very beginning, within a week of the black hole starting to feed on the star.
It was also the first time an optically detectable jetting TDE has been made.
“Until now, the few known jetted TDE’s were originally discovered using high-energy gamma-ray and X-ray observatories,” said Dr. Perley.
When AT2022cmc was first discovered, scientists used the NICER (New Instrument for Compositional Research) X-ray telescope on the International Space Station to study it.
They discovered that the source of the radiation was 100 times more powerful than the most powerful ever identified.
As brilliant as they are, falling stars can only produce so much light, according to Dr. Benjamin Gompertz of the University of Birmingham, who led the research.
“We realized that something really gigantic must be powering AT 2022cmc, since it was so brilliant and lasted so long – a supermassive black hole,” the author said.
His team concluded that the destruction of the star caused a vortex of material to fall into the black hole, causing the intense X-ray activity.
According to Dr. Pasham, it is likely devouring the star at a rate of half the mass of the Sun per year.
The results of the study of AT2022cmc were published today in two journals, Nature and Nature Astronomy.
It has been well over a decade since a TDE has flown, and scientists are still puzzled as to why some TDEs fly and others do not.
The speed at which the star’s material spins around the black hole as it is consumed is thought to have something to do with it, and a particularly fast spin could be driving the brilliant jets.
Astronomers believe they may be able to see more TDEs and find some answers as more powerful telescopes are deployed.
We expect to see many more of these TDEs in the future,” said co-author and MIT professor Dr. Matteo Lucchini.
Then we may finally be able to explain how black holes produce these very powerful jets.
A former US Air Force fighter pilot asserts that he has deciphered
the method behind the extraordinary maneuvers of UFOs, reports dailystar.co.uk.
Over
the past two decades, numerous military encounters with these enigmatic
crafts have been reported, prompting a significant investigation by the
Pentagon.
One of the most renowned sightings occurred during the
USS Nimitz encounter, where fighter pilots witnessed a UFO descending
from 28,000 feet to just above sea level in less than a second.
This
astonishing movement would imply that the craft reached a staggering
speed of 19,000 miles per hour, a velocity that would be fatal to any
human pilot.
According
to Chris Lehto, a former USAF pilot, the craft exhibits two key
characteristics: it moves without inertia, essentially lacking weight,
and it accelerates at an incredibly rapid pace without affecting its
surroundings.
Image: NATO Allied Air Command/Facebook
Chris
believes that the explanation lies within a technology that seems
straight out of science fiction. He proposes that the answer to the UFO
enigma lies in the Alcubierre Drive, a theoretical interstellar engine
conceptualized by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994.
The
Alcubierre Drive employs a form of “space warp” technology, reminiscent
of what has been depicted in episodes of Star Trek. By bending space, a
craft inside a “warp bubble” could potentially travel at or even
surpass the speed of light without violating the known laws of physics.
While
the Alcubierre Drive remains a hypothetical concept with challenges to
overcome, Chris notes that the required energy is no longer believed to
be unattainably large.
Patents
filed with the US patent office outline the potential workings of the
drive, as well as another groundbreaking technology theorized by
American aerospace engineer Salvatore Pais.
Pais suggests that
high-powered rotating magnets could theoretically eliminate an object’s
inertia, and he has filed a patent for a starship based on this
principle.
However, Chris maintains skepticism regarding Pais’
theory. He explains that while Pais’s patent applications for the US
Navy attracted attention for their potential energy-related
applications, doubts have been raised about their feasibility. There is
speculation that they may be scams, pseudoscience, or disinformation
intended to mislead adversaries of the United States.
Alternatively,
rival theories propose that the “Tic Tac” UFO is a classified Pentagon
project testing similar advanced technologies discussed by Chris.
Scientists say they have found evidence of a new Earth-like
planet that has suddenly appeared in our Solar System and is orbiting
the Sun.
Physicists, including those from the National Astronomical Observatory
of Japan, said the planet is likely to be the mysterious ‘Planet Nine’
that was hypothesised to exist in the far outer edges of the Solar
System.
Several studies in the past have suggested there is likely an
undiscovered planet beyond the Kuiper Belt – a stellar disk of materials
such as asteroids, space rocks, comets around the Sun in the outer
Solar System past the orbit of Neptune.
Independent.co.uk reports: In the new research, published recently in The Astronomical Journal, scientists
found that some of the objects in the Kuiper Belt behave in a way
indicative of the presence of a small planet among them.
One such object, they said, is about 500 astronomical units (AU) from
the Sun, where 1 AU is the distance between the Sun and the Earth.
In comparison Neptune is at a distance of 30 AUs from the Sun.
Some of these were also found to have “odd” orbits suggesting they
are being pull by the gravity of a cosmic entity larger than those that
typically influence such objects.
Computer simulations run by the scientists indicate that the most
likely explanation for the observations was another hidden planet in the
Kuiper Belt.
“We predict the existence of an Earth-like planet,” researchers wrote in the study.
“It is plausible that a primordial planetary body could survive in
the distant Kuiper Belt as a Kuiper Belt planet (KBP), as many such
bodies existed in the early solar system,” they added.
If such a planet exists, researchers say it would have a mass about
1.5 to 3 times that of Earth with an inclination of about 30 degrees.
They say the theorised planet’s orbit would likely place it between 250 and 500 AU from the Sun.
Researchers say the discovery of such a planet close to the Kuiper
Belt can unravel new constraints on planet formation and evolution.
“In conclusion, the results of the KBP scenario support the existence
of a yet-undiscovered planet in the far outer solar system,” scientists
noted.
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