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
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00:00visit chandra's beautiful universe at 2019 qiz
00:08a massive black hole has torn apart one star and is now using that stellar wreckage to pummel
00:16another star or smaller black hole that used to be in the clear this discovery made with
00:22nasa's chandra x-ray observatory and other telescopes helps astronomers link two mysteries
00:28where there had previously only been hints of a connection in 2019 astronomers witnessed the
00:34signal of a star that got too close to a black hole and was destroyed by the black hole's
00:39gravitational forces once shredded the star's remains began circling the black hole in a disc
00:46in a type of stellar graveyard over a few years however this disc has expanded outward and is
00:53now directly in the path of a star or possibly a stellar mass black hole orbiting the massive
00:58black hole at a previously safe distance the orbiting star is now repeatedly crashing through
01:04the debris disc about once every 48 hours as it circles when it does the collision costs
01:11bursts of x-rays that astronomers captured with chandra like a diver repeatedly going into
01:17a pool and creating a splash every time she enters the water the star striking the disc creates a huge
01:23splash of gas and x-rays as the star orbits around the black hole it does this over and over again
01:30scientists have documented many cases where an object gets too close to a black hole and gets torn
01:36apart in a single burst of light astronomers call these tidal disruption events or tdes in recent years
01:44astronomers have also discovered a new class of bright flashes from the centers of galaxies which
01:49are detected only in x-rays and repeat many times these events are also connected to supermassive black
01:56holes but astronomers could not explain what caused the semi-regular bursts of x-rays they dubbed these
02:02quasi-periodic eruptions or qpe's this discovery gives astronomers evidence that tdes and qpe's can be
02:11different phases of the same phenomenon in addition to chandra the researchers used nasa's hubble space
02:17telescope nicer telescope aboard the international space station and the neil garrell swift telescope
02:24astronomers will continue to look for more of these events to learn more about how black holes grow
02:29and to study the prevalence and distances of objects in close orbits around massive black holes
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