This artist's impression shows the aftermath of a supermassive black hole having destroyed a star. Tidal forces from the black hole ripped the star apart when it approached too close, and some of the star's gas (red) is orbiting around and falling into the black hole. A portion of the gas is driven away in a wind (blue). A bully black hole has torn apart one star and has now set about a smaller black hole, according to space scientists. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes have identified a supermassive black hole creating cosmic destruction. The new research is helping to connect two space mysteries and provides information about the environment around some of the bigger types of black holes. It shows how the black hole is using the stellar wreckage of its first victim to "pummel another star or smaller black hole".
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Jaw-dropping images show gigantic black hole tear apart star

10 Oct 2024, 15:14 by Ian Hughes, Dean Murray · Manchester Evening News

A bully black hole has torn apart one star and has now set about a smaller black hole, according to space scientists.

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes have identified a supermassive black hole causing cosmic destruction. The new research is helping to connect two space mysteries and provides information about the environment around some of the bigger types of black holes.

It shows how the black hole is using the stellar wreckage of its first victim to "pummel another star or smaller black hole". A dramatic illustration of the event shows a disk of material that was created after a supermassive black hole tearing apart a star through intense tidal forces.

Over the course of a few years, this disk expanded outward until it intersected with another object - either a star or a small black hole - that is also in orbit around the giant black hole.

Each time this object crashes into the disk, it sends out a burst of X-rays detected by Chandra. In 2019, an optical telescope in California noticed a burst of light that astronomers later categorised as a "tidal disruption event", or TDE. These are cases where black holes tear stars apart if they get too close through their powerful tidal forces.

Meanwhile, scientists were also tracking instances of another type of cosmic phenomena occasionally observed across the Universe. These were brief and regular bursts of X-rays that were near supermassive black holes. Astronomers named these events "quasi-periodic eruptions," or QPEs.

This latest study gives scientists evidence that TDEs and QPEs are likely connected. The researchers think that QPEs arise when an object smashes into the disk left behind after the TDE. While there may be other explanations, the authors of the study propose this is the source of at least some QPEs.

The paper describing the results appears in the journal Nature this week.