Never-Before-Seen Eruption Sees Black Hole Burp Material Years After It Ate Star

 

When stars get too close, supermassive black holes rip them to shreds. This is called a tidal disruption event (TDE).  The spewing out of material follows the star is destroyed. the black hole powerful gravity pulls the star apart, material is swirling around the black hole and illuminating it. However, in the instance of AT2018hyz, something extraordinary and unheard of happened. The star was ripped part, and debris scattered everywhere. The black hole expelled material again three years later.

 No one has ever seen anything like this, said Yvette Cendes, the main author of a recent publication from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.

When AT2018hyz was found in 2018, it was first assumed to be unremarkable. The emission was reliable with a tiny star, one-tenth the mass of the Sun, being ripped apart by the black hole. The team witnessed this object flare up again, but in an odd way, when they searched for more TDEs.

 The material expelled by the black hole was accelerated to unevenly half of the speed of light. Most TDE outflows are five times faster than this. This system is obviously acting strangely, whatever it is going.

Edo Berger, professor of astronomy at Harvard University and the CfA and co-author of the new study, stated: "We have been studying TDEs with radio telescopes for more than a decade and sometimes find they shine in radio waves as they spew out material while the star is first being consumed by the black hole.

 “But in AT2018hyz there was radio silence for the first three years, and now it’s dramatically lit up to become one of the most radio luminous TDEs ever observed.”

The discovery of such an event raises intriguing questions about how supermassive black holes behave. Astronomers have known that these cosmic giants are messy eaters, but their feeding habits appear to be a mystery.

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