A star orbiting a supermassive black hole at the centre of a distant galaxy was ripped apart in a tidal disruption event, the furthest ever observed
Carl Knox / OzGrav, ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery, Swinburne University of Technology
Astronomers have found the most distant known example of a star being eaten by a supermassive black hole, creating one of the brightest events ever seen in the universe., it can be torn apart and swept into a disc surrounding the black hole, an energetic ordeal known as a tidal disruption event. Astronomers have seen about 125 of these events to date.
In February, researchers at the Palomar Observatory in California spotted a new, extremely bright tidal disruption event, naming it AT2022cmc. Follow-up observations by telescopes around the world revealed it took place in a galaxy roughly 12.5 billion light-years from us. “It’s a new record,” saysAdvertisement
This distant destruction was only visible because the black hole fired out a jet of plasma and radiation at close to the speed of light from its poles as it ate the star, a rare occurrence thought to only happen in 1 per cent of tidal disruption events. That jet was pointed directly towards us, making AT2022cmc “among the brightest” astronomical events ever observed, says Andreoni. Exactly how these jets are produced isn’t understood. “It’s still a mystery,” says Andreoni.
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