Black Hole Swallowing a Star

[DRSB]

June 16, 2011
Unusual Celestial Event Was Black Hole Swallowing a Star
By SINDYA N. BHANOO
In what sounds like a one of a kind murder mystery, a dying star has fallen into a black hole and been ripped apart.

The event, which was observed on March 28, was originally thought to be a gamma ray burst from a collapsing star but researchers suspected something more sinister was at play. Their findings appear in a pair of papers published online by the journal Science.

Traditional gamma ray bursts involve a deluge of high-energy photons bursting through the air. They generally result from the explosion of a star or when two objects collide in space.

In this case the burst was unusually long, said Joshua Bloom, an associate professor of astronomy at Berkeley and the first author of one of the studies.

The burst also came from the center of a galaxy four billion light years away. Most galaxies are thought to have black holes at their center, a clue that tipped off Dr. Bloom and his colleagues.

“Astronomers are not so different from real estate agents — location, location, location,” he said. “This picture had emerged for me and I saw that this was a black hole swallowing up a star.”

He and his colleagues used data gathered by the Swift Gamma Burst Mission, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory to confirm their theory.

They also looked at historical data to look for similar events involving the same black hole, but they found no other occurrences.

“This is a singular event in the history of mankind,” Dr. Bloom said. “This black hole was otherwise sitting dormant, a star got too close, its gas got ripped apart and in doing so some of it got spit up.”

There are still a number of unanswered questions that the researchers are exploring, like how large the star was in comparison to the sun, how close it got to the black hole and role of the hole’s spin in the event.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/scien ... nted=print

[klr]

Auntie's take on this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13783877

Powerful cosmic blast as black hole shreds star



Astronomers have spied a star's swan song as it is shredded by a black hole.

Researchers suspect that the star wandered too close to the black hole and got sucked in by the huge gravitational forces.

The star's final moments sent a flash of radiation hurtling towards Earth.

The energy burst is still visible by telescope more than two-and-a-half months later, the researchers report in the journal Science.

The Swift spacecraft constantly scans the skies for bursts of radiation, notifying astronomers when it locates a potential flare.

These bursts usually indicate the implosion of an aging star, which produces a single, quick blast of energy.

But this event, first spotted on 28 March 2011 and designated Sw 1644+57, does not have the marks of an imploding sun.

What intrigued the researchers about this gamma ray burst is that it flared up four times over a period of four hours.

Astrophysicist Dr Andrew Levan from the University of Warwick, and his colleagues suspected that they were looking at a very different sort of galactic event; one where a passing star got sucked into a black hole.

The energy bursts matched nicely with what you might expect when you "throw a star into a black hole", Dr Levan told BBC News.

Gasless centres

Black holes are thought to reside at the centres of most major galaxies. Some black holes are surrounded by matter in the form of gas; light is emitted when the gas is dragged into the hole. However, the centres of most galaxies are devoid of gas and so are invisible from Earth.

These black holes only become visible when an object such as a star is pulled in. If this happens, the star becomes elongated, first spreading out to form a "banana shape" before its inner edge - orbiting faster than the outer edge - pulls the star into a disc-shape that wraps itself around the hole.

As material drops into the black hole it becomes compressed and releases radiation that is usually visible from Earth for a month or so.

Events like these, termed mini-quasars, are incredibly rare - researchers expect one every hundred million years in any one galaxy.

The researchers used some of most powerful ground-based and space-based observatories - the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Gemini and Keck Telescopes.

[Geoff]

Auntie's take on this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13783877

Events like these, termed mini-quasars, are incredibly rare - researchers expect one every hundred million years in any one galaxy.

So, that's about one every year, then...?

[PsychoSerenity]

I always wonder with these artist's impressions, how accurate are they?

[Coito ergo sum]

About as accurate as you might expect...

[PsychoSerenity]

Well I really don't know - with things like architecture or whatever, they get artists who know what they're doing, to accurately show what the new buildings will look like - but when it comes to astronomy - are the artists people who have also studied the physics and got their "impressions" from actual data? Or is it just pure fantasy science fiction artwork?

[Atheist-Lite]

Well I really don't know - with things like architecture or whatever, they get artists who know what they're doing, to accurately show what the new buildings will look like - but when it comes to astronomy - are the artists people who have also studied the physics and got their "impressions" from actual data? Or is it just pure fantasy science fiction artwork?

Artists study art.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Traditional gamma ray bursts involve a deluge of high-energy photons bursting through the air.

Through the air? Really? Whatever happened to science reporting?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I find it interesting that they say "wandered" too close, as I've heard that binary stars often do this dance of death.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

The energy burst is still visible by telescope more than two-and-a-half months later, the researchers report in the journal Science.

Actually, 4 billion years, two and a half months later!

[Atheist-Lite]

The energy burst is still visible by telescope more than two-and-a-half months later, the researchers report in the journal Science.

Actually, 4 billion years, two and a half months later!

Only relative to this speck of dust.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

The energy burst is still visible by telescope more than two-and-a-half months later, the researchers report in the journal Science.

Actually, 4 billion years, two and a half months later!

Only relative to this speck of dust.

I have no relatives anywhere else.

[Atheist-Lite]

The energy burst is still visible by telescope more than two-and-a-half months later, the researchers report in the journal Science.

Actually, 4 billion years, two and a half months later!

Only relative to this speck of dust.

I have no relatives anywhere else.

How do you know you exist then? Precisely what is your evidence to date?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The energy burst is still visible by telescope more than two-and-a-half months later, the researchers report in the journal Science.

Actually, 4 billion years, two and a half months later!

Only relative to this speck of dust.

I have no relatives anywhere else.

All the Reptilians say that, however.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

The energy burst is still visible by telescope more than two-and-a-half months later, the researchers report in the journal Science.

Actually, 4 billion years, two and a half months later!

Only relative to this speck of dust.

I have no relatives anywhere else.

How do you know you exist then? Precisely what is your evidence to date?

It feels good when I wank. What more do I need?