It seems that the universe is equipped with its own light switches.
Some 500 million Light year Far away, an unfortunate star the size of our sun gets sucked into a mini black hole every week – and astronomers found this situation because they noticed the wonderful flashes that accompany the event. These flashes appear to erupt when a black hole devours interstellar matter, then shine brightly for seven to 10 days before suddenly stopping, much like flicking a light switch. After nearly a month, the black hole headed toward the star again.
It was first recorded in June 2022 by a space telescope called Nil Girls Swift ObservatoryThese observations show the star, a white dwarf called Swift J0230, losing mass three times that of the Sun. Land Each time it passes near the black hole. Astronomers call this process tidal disruption, and only about 100 of them are known.
Related: The black hole is tearing apart the star in a cosmic feeding frenzy that has astronomers excited
not uncommon for stars to only be partially shredded black holes in this way – previous search He suggests that these half-deaths could be more common than demolished ones – but previous eruptions occurred either every few hours or once a year. The team’s new notes provide a nice middle ground.
“Swift J0230 is an exciting addition to the class of turbulent stars in part because it shows us that these two classes of objects already found are actually related, with our new system giving us the missing link,” said Rob Isles Ferris, one of the researchers. A fellow at the University of Leicester in the UK said a statement.
The team describes Swift J0230 as a “chance finding”, as previous observations between December 2021 and January 2022 did not detect the devastating event. After the initial detection in June, regular observations of Swift J0230 revealed a rapid decrease in the star’s brightness on the fourth day. According to the new study, this is the point at which it eased by a factor of 20 in just 57 kiloseconds (15.8 hours), according to the new study. Soon after, the star became elusive from telescope observations.
The team’s best guess for Swift J0230’s location is that it’s close to the galactic center, as one might expect, because that’s where black holes usually reside. However, it is worth noting that the spot suspected to contain the star also coincides with the location of a type II supernova discovered in 2020. While the team does not completely rule out the possibility that what they are looking at is actually a starburst, “it is hard to see how prof Supernova “It could have evolved into the body we discovered,” the researchers wrote in their new study.
The black hole part of this equation is at the center of a galaxy called 2MASX J02301709+2836050, a small galaxy about 10,000 to 100,000 times the mass the sun. In comparison, the Giant black hole in our midst milky way The galaxy is more than 4 million times more massive than our Sun, and many other galaxies lurk in its depths space It hosts approximately 100 million times the mass of the Sun.
The new study, which marks the first time a star the size of our sun has been shredded, shows how relatively small black holes are hungry cosmic monsters. However, why this particular void only partially disrupts the star is not well understood.
Much of the current research on disruptive events focuses on the star’s distance from the black hole as the main determinant of how far the star is being torn apart. To find out more, a different team of astronomers used a supercomputer in 2021 to do just that simulation How eight different types of stars deform as they approach a supermassive black hole.
Their results showed that the initial density of stars is also a significant contributor, and that partial perturbations play an “important, but previously neglected” role in star death and can “reduce the number of massive stars before they fail completely”.
Swift J0230 seems headed for a similar fate.
This research is described in a paper Published September 7 in Nature Astronomy.
