Recently, Harvard Astronomers have been observing a black hole they had once seen before suddenly spew out the star remains it had consumed three years ago. When first observing AT2018hyz in 2018, the group had watched the remaining light of the enveloped star fade away and had pushed it to the back of their minds until now.
Now seeing the excrements of the star being spewed out by the black hole nearly three years later, they're saying this the longest delay they've seen between the feeding and outflow of the black hole. Sebastian Gomez, leader of the research group, had calculated that the mass of the star that was torn apart is about a tenth of the mass of the sun.
Tidal disruption events (TDEs) are how the group was brought back to AT2018hyz in the first place. They had examined peculiar radio waves from a New Mexico observatory, and connected it back to their forgotten project. The extended time period between the feeding of the black hole and the 'burping' had not been seen before, causing scientists to revisit what the know about black holes and research more about the time period between that feeding and outflow.
Furthermore, with recent data and research on radio waves of past black holes, scientists are creating programs and models to display the time delay and correlation. The group has stated that they don't really know what's going on, just that it's getting brighter which could mean AT2018hyz isn't done 'burping'. One thing we know for certain: we still have a lot of research to do on the topic of black holes and their 'burping' time periods.
Sources:
Harvard Astrophysicists Discover Black Hole With Delayed Stellar Burp | News | The Harvard Crimson. (2018). Thecrimson.com. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/10/25/black-hole-research/
“We’ve Never Seen Anything Like This Before:” Black Hole Spews Out Material Years After Shredding Star | Center for Astrophysics. (2018). Harvard.edu. https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/weve-never-seen-anything-black-hole-spews-out-material-years-after-shredding-star
Comments
Post a Comment