The predatory black hole consumes three of Earth’s stars every time it passes through

A star like our Sun in a nearby galaxy is gradually being devoured by a small but ravenous black hole, losing mass equivalent to three Earth planets each time it passes close by.

This discovery was reported by astronomers at the University of Leicester Nature Astronomy It provides the “missing link” in our knowledge of black holes disrupting stars orbiting them. It indicates that there is a whole host of stars in the process of being consumed that are still undiscovered.

Astronomers were alerted to the star by a bright X-ray flash that appeared to be coming from the center of nearby galaxy 2MASX J02301709+2836050, about 500 million light-years away from the Milky Way. Named Swift J0230, the asteroid was spotted the moment it occurred for the first time using a new instrument developed by scientists for the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory.

They quickly scheduled more rapid observations of it, and found that instead of fading away as expected, it would shine brightly for 7 to 10 days and then suddenly go out, repeating this process about every 25 days.

Similar behavior has been observed in so-called quasi-periodic explosions and periodic nuclear explosions, in which a star has material that is torn apart by a black hole as its orbit approaches it, but differs in the number of times it erupts, and in whether it explodes or not. The blast in X-ray or optical light is predominant. The regularity of Swift J0230’s emissions decreased between the two, indicating that it constitutes the “missing link” between the two types of explosions.

Using the models proposed for these two classes of events as a guide, the scientists concluded that the Swift J0230 explosion represents a star about the size of our Sun in an elliptical orbit around the low-mass black hole at the center of its galaxy. . When the star’s orbit approaches the black hole’s intense gravitational pull, material the mass of three Earths is grabbed from the star’s atmosphere and heated as it falls into the black hole.

The extreme heat, about 2 million degrees Celsius, releases a massive amount of X-rays that the Swift satellite captured for the first time.

Lead author Dr Phil Evans, from the University of Leicester’s School of Physics and Astronomy, said: “This is the first time we’ve seen a star like our Sun repeatedly shredded and consumed by a low-mass black hole.”

“The so-called ‘frequent and partial tidal disturbance’ events are in themselves an entirely new discovery and seem to fall into two types: those that erupt every few hours, and those that erupt every year or so. This new system falls right into this gap between These, and when you run the numbers, the types of objects involved fall into place as well.”

Dr. Rob Isles Ferris, who works with Dr. Evans on the Swift satellite, recently received his Ph.D. in Leicester, which included the study of stars disrupted by black holes. “In most systems we’ve seen in the past, the star has been completely destroyed,” he explains. “Swift J0230 is an exciting addition to the class of partially turbulent stars as it shows us that these two classes of objects that already exist are really connected, and our new system gives us the missing link.”

Dr Kim Page, from the University of Leicester, who analyzed the data for the study, said: “Given that we found Swift J0230 within a few months of enabling our new cross-hunting tool, we would expect there to be a lot more things like this out there, waiting to be found.” be exposed.”

Dr Chris Nixon is a theoretical astrophysicist who recently transferred from the University of Leicester to the University of Leeds. He led the theoretical explanation for this event.

Researchers estimate that the mass of the black hole is about 10,000 to 100,000 times that of our sun, which is very small for the supermassive black holes that are usually found in the centers of galaxies. The black hole at the center of our galaxy is believed to have a mass of 4 million solar masses, while most of it is located in the region of 100 million solar masses.

This is the first detection made using the new Swift satellite transit detector, which the University of Leicester team has developed and is running on their computers. When an extreme event that causes an X-ray burst occurs in an area of ​​the sky where there were no X-rays before, astronomers call it a transiting astronomical X-ray. Despite the extreme events they foreshadow, finding them isn’t easy, or at least not quickly – which is why this new tool was developed to search for new types of transients in real time.

Dr Evans adds: “This type of object was basically undetectable until we built this new facility, and soon after we stumbled upon this completely new, unprecedented event. Swift is almost 20 years old and he has suddenly detected completely new events.” “We didn’t know it existed before. And I think that shows that every time you find a new way of looking at space, you learn something new and discover that there is something that you didn’t know before.”

Dr Caroline Harper, Head of Space Sciences at the UK Space Agency, said: “This is another exciting discovery from the world-leading Swift mission – a low-mass black hole that receives ‘bites’ from a sun-like star as it orbits.” close enough.”

“The UK Space Agency has been working in partnership with NASA on this mission for many years; the UK has led the development of hardware for two of the main science instruments and we have provided funding for the Swift Science Data Centre, which we continue to support.” “We look forward to more insights from Swift into gamma-ray bursts throughout the universe, and the massive events they cause, in the future.”