A supermassive black hole has been "slurping" the remains of a disintegrating star for four years, spewing out extraordinary energy in the form of radio waves, experts have discovered.
Astronomers say the radio wave burst emanating from a black hole could be one of the brightest and most energetic phenomena ever detected in the universe. Calculations show its current energy is up to 100 trillion times greater than that of the Death Star, the famous Star Wars superweapon.
The energy outburst from the black hole is extremely unusual, as stars that come too close to black holes are usually destroyed by their gravity, but do not emit this much energy for years. Astronomers predict that the speed of this "cosmic merger" will increase even more, reaching a peak next year.
The phenomenon began in 2018, when a small star disintegrated after approaching a black hole in a galaxy 665 million light-years from Earth. The event, called a tidal disruption event, or TDE, produced what astronomers call “spaghettification” – the vertical stretching and horizontal squeezing of the star into a thin shape.
Three years after the massacre, the black hole began to light up the sky, releasing vast amounts of energy in radio waves. According to the latest study, the energy emitted is 50 times greater than when it was first detected. The phenomenon is officially called AT2018hyz, but the team has christened it “Jetty McJetface.”
Astronomers have calculated that the black hole is emitting energy equivalent to a gamma-ray burst, potentially one of the most powerful events ever detected in the universe. In sci-fi parlance, that's at least a trillion — perhaps as much as 100 trillion — times more energy than the Death Star would produce.
Black holes are so dense and their gravity so strong that not even light can escape. They suck in the dust and gas around them, and are considered the most powerful sources of gravity in the galaxy. How they form is not yet fully understood, but it is believed that they may arise from the collapse of large clouds of gas or from the death of giant stars that explode as supernovae.
This discovery was recently published in the Astrophysical Journal and continues to amaze the scientific community about the extremely large energy produced by a black hole that is still "digesting" the remains of a star. /GazetaExpress/
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