A black hole swallowed a star and sent a jet of light towards Earth

In recent days, a “very rare” phenomenon has occurred: a star was “swallowed” by a black hole, “stretched out” and exploded in the form of energy in the direction of planet Earth, which until recently was unimaginable to be able to appreciate

This phenomenon (which poses no danger to the Earth) is known as Tidal break event (TDE). What happens to the star when it enters the black hole and detaches from its original shape – it ‘stretches’ until it takes on another shape – is called “spaghettization”. It usually happens at a distance imperceptible to the human eye.

It was detected by a group of astronomers who published their research Nov. 30 in the journals Nature and Nature Astronomy. It was the furthest TDE in history.

Researchers reported detecting a supermassive black hole engulfing a star 12.4 billion light-years away in an event they dubbed AT2022cmc.

The jet of energy that erupted from the black hole was “bright” and “massive,” making it observable from Earth using optical telescopes.

“The luminous jet of material was launched at nearly the speed of light and was aimed in our direction,” he told The Daily Beast. Igon AndreoniUniversity of Maryland astronomer and co-editor of the journal Nature.

“This is an extremely rare phenomenon and it is even rarer that it can be observed because the jet is collimated, which means that we can only observe it if we are very close to the direction in which it points”, concluded the specialist.

In short

For Andreoni, light traveled through the cosmos for 8.5 billion years before reaching uswhen the universe was a third of his age.

“We argued that the black hole was probably spinning fast, which could play an important role in launching these powerful jets,” Andreoni said.

He continued: “We also concluded that the black hole, despite being ‘supermassive’, is no more massive than most black holes at the center of galaxies. ‘Only’ a few hundred million times the mass of our Sun.

The researcher thinks a new observatory will be able to “detect an entire population of jet-propelled TDEs” using optical telescopes. “Revealing such a rare population of transients means we can greatly improve our understanding of the violent universe,” he said.