A team of scientists from Oregon State University and Harvard University, led by astrophysicist Ivette Sendres, has stumbled upon a supermassive black hole that exhibits some rather peculiar behavior.
According to the researchers, the radio wave emissions from this are among the brightest and most energetically powerful phenomena they have ever observed. The astronomical event has been officially named AT2018hyz, but humorously dubbed Jetty McJetface.
What Shocked the Researchers?
The scientists reported that for four consecutive years, the black hole they discovered has been suffering from what they call “cosmic indigestion.” It has been ejecting remnants of a star it tore apart when the star ventured too close.
According to the researchers, the energy emitted by the jet is “trillions, if not hundreds of trillions of times” greater than that of the infamous Death Star from Star Wars.
For reference: The “Death Star” is a battle station the size of a small planetoid in the fictional universe of Star Wars. It was a superweapon of the Galactic Empire capable of destroying entire planets.
Previously, astrophysicists have documented numerous instances of stars approaching black holes and being torn apart by their gravitational fields. However, a black hole that continues to emit such a vast amount of energy years after consuming a star is unprecedented.
How It All Happened
The process began in 2018 when a small was ripped to shreds after coming too close to a black hole located 665 million light-years from Earth.
This so-called “tidal disruption event” (TDE) was not unexpected for astronomers, who frequently observe such phenomena while studying the night sky.
In this case, the gravitational field of the black hole tore the nearby star apart in a process known as “spaghettification.” This term describes the extreme vertical stretching and horizontal compression of objects into long, thin shapes due to the influence of extraordinarily strong gravitational forces.
However, nearly three years later, the black hole began emitting a tremendous amount of energy in the form of radio waves, as reported by Daily Mail.
The team noted that the energy emitted by the black hole has sharply increased over the past few years, making this cosmic object 50 times brighter than at the beginning of their observations.
Astronomers speculate that the flow of radio waves being ejected will grow exponentially, peaking in 2027.
“This is truly unusual. It’s hard for me to imagine that this has been developing for so long and in this way… No one has ever seen anything like this before,” said Dr. Sendres. According to the team’s calculations, this is one of the most powerful single events ever recorded in the universe.
Co-author of the study, Edo Berger, a professor of astronomy at Harvard University, commented on the observations: “We have been studying tidal earthquakes with radio telescopes for over ten years. Sometimes we find that they glow in radio waves, ejecting material at the moment when a star is just beginning to be consumed by a black hole. But in AT2018hyz, there was radio silence for the first three years, and now the object has sharply activated, becoming one of the brightest radio emissions from a tidal event ever observed.”
The team plans to continue monitoring the object. Scientists are extremely curious about how it will behave in the coming years.
The results of the study were published in the Astrophysical Journal.
