Superb illustration shows star devoured by supermassive black hole

When it comes to enjoying a hearty meal, it seems black holes can be just as messy as some toddlers.

That’s because a stunning new illustration shows the moment a star is devoured by a cosmic giant, leaving behind a ring of dust that looks like crumbs left on a plate.

This shredding of an unfortunate star produces what astronomers call a “tidal disturbance event,” which is accompanied by an explosion of radiation that can eclipse the combined light from each star in the black hole’s host galaxy for decades. months or even years.

This particular black hole, captured using x-rays emitted by a tidal disturbance event known as J2150, is a type that has long eluded observation – an intermediate-mass black hole.

“The fact that we were able to catch this black hole as it devoured a star provides a remarkable opportunity to observe what would otherwise be invisible,” said Ann Zabludoff, co-author of the article and professor at the University. from Arizona.

“Not only that, but by analyzing the eruption, we were able to better understand this elusive category of black holes, which may well represent the majority of black holes in the center of galaxies.”

By re-analyzing the x-ray data used to observe the J2150 eruption, and comparing them to sophisticated theoretical models, the authors showed that this eruption did indeed come from an encounter between an unlucky star and a mass black hole. intermediate.

The intermediate black hole in question is of particularly low mass – for a black hole, that is – weighing about 10,000 times the mass of the sun.

According to Sixiang Wen, a postdoctoral associate researcher at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory, the team was able to classify it as an intermediate black hole after measuring its mass and rotation.

Dozens of tidal disturbance events have been observed in the centers of large galaxies hosting supermassive black holes, and a handful have also been observed in the centers of small galaxies that may contain intermediate black holes.

However, past data has never been detailed enough to prove that an individual tidal disturbance eruption was fueled by an intermediate black hole.

“Thanks to modern astronomical observations, we know that the centers of almost all galaxies similar in size to or larger than our Milky Way host central supermassive black holes,” said study co-author Nicholas Stone, master of lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

“These behemoths are between 1 million and 10 billion times the mass of our sun, and they become powerful sources of electromagnetic radiation when too much interstellar gas falls nearby.”

The mass of these black holes is closely related to the total mass of their host galaxies, so the larger galaxies host the larger supermassive black holes.

“We still know very little about the existence of black holes at the center of galaxies smaller than the Milky Way,” said co-author Peter Jonker of Radboud University in the Netherlands.

“Due to observation limitations, it is difficult to find central black holes much smaller than a million solar masses.”

Despite their presumed abundance, the origins of supermassive black holes remain unknown.

However, one theory is that intermediate mass black holes could be the seeds from which supermassive black holes develop.

Jonker added: “If we get a better idea of ​​the number of bona fide intermediate black holes, it can help determine which theories of supermassive black hole formation are correct.”

The measurement of the spin of J2150 is also important, as it contains clues about the growth of black holes.

This one has a quick spin, but not the fastest possible, Zabludoff explained, which begs the question of how he ended up with a spin in that range.

“It’s possible that the black hole formed this way and hasn’t changed much since, or that two black holes of intermediate mass have recently merged to form this one,” she said.

“We know that the rotation we measured excludes scenarios in which the black hole grows over a long period of time due to regular gas consumption or many quick gas snacks arriving from random directions.”

Additionally, measuring spin allows astrophysicists to test hypotheses about the nature of dark matter, which is believed to make up most of the matter in the universe.

Dark matter can be made up of unknown elementary particles that have not yet been seen in laboratory experiments. Among the candidates are hypothetical particles known as ultralight bosons, Stone said.

“If these particles exist and have masses within a certain range, they will prevent a black hole of intermediate mass from spinning rapidly,” he said.

“Yet the J2150 black hole is spinning fast. Thus, our spin measurement excludes a large class of ultralight boson theories, showing the value of black holes as alien laboratories for particle physics.

In the future, new observations of tidal disturbance eruptions could allow astronomers to fill in the gaps regarding the distribution of certain types of black holes.

New telescopes, both on Earth and in space, are expected to discover thousands of tidal disturbance events each year.

“If it turns out that most dwarf galaxies contain intermediate mass black holes, then they will dominate the rate of stellar tidal disturbance,” Stone said.

“By adapting the X-ray emission from these flares to theoretical models, we can perform a census of the population of intermediate mass black holes in the universe,” Wen added.