NASA finds 'monster' black hole 600 million light-years away in 'scene out of a sci-fi movie'
NASA has pinpointed a massive, roaming black hole that is so big they have dubbed the hole 'Super Jaws'
It is easy to get swept away in the wonders of space. There is extensive and ongoing research on space, with scientists having even struck gold recently when trying to reconstruct what happened after the Big Bang.
However, NASA has stumbled upon another mind-blowing discovery - a massive roaming black hole lurking 600 million light-years away that is "like a scene out of a sci-fi movie".
Astronomers using NASA telescopes have found 'Space Jaws' - a wandering, supermassive black hole. What's more, an accompanying telescope also revealed that the black hole is offset from the centre of the galaxy.
"Within the inky black depths between stars, there is an invisible monster gulping down any wayward star that plummets toward it," a NASA spokesperson excitingly elaborated.
"The sneaky black hole betrayed its presence in a newly identified tidal disruption event (TDE) where a hapless star was ripped apart and swallowed in a spectacular burst of radiation.
"These disruption events are powerful probes of black hole physics, revealing the conditions necessary for launching jets and winds when a black hole is in the midst of consuming a star, and are seen as bright objects by telescopes."
A black hole is a region in space where the pulling force of gravity is so strong that light is not able to escape.
The strong gravity occurs because matter has been pressed into a tiny space.
This compression can take place at the end of a star's life. Some black holes are a result of dying stars.
Because no light can escape, black holes are invisible. However, space telescopes with special instruments can help find black holes. They can observe the behaviour of material and stars that are very close to black holes.
So, what does this latest find mean?
A TDE happens when an infalling star is stretched or 'spaghettified' by a black hole's immense gravitational tidal forces. The shredded stellar remnants are pulled into a circular orbit around the black hole.
This generates shocks and outflows with high temperatures that can be seen in ultraviolet and visible light.
'AT2024tvd is the first offset TDE captured by optical sky surveys," said lead study author Yuhan Yao.
"It opens up the entire possibility of uncovering this elusive population of wandering black holes with future sky surveys."
The full paper will be published in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters, but the space agency was surprised to find that this one million-solar-mass black hole doesn't reside exactly in the centre of the host galaxy.
This is where supermassive black holes are typically found, and actively gobble up surrounding material.
In fact, at the centre of the host galaxy there is a different supermassive black hole weighing 100 million times the mass of the Sun.
Hubble's optical precision shows the TDE was only 2,600 light-years from the more massive black hole at the galaxy's centre.
That's just one-tenth the distance between our Sun and the Milky Way's central supermassive black hole.
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This bigger black hole spews out energy as it accretes infalling gas, and it is categorised as an active galactic nucleus.
Strangely, the two supermassive black holes co-exist in the same galaxy, but are not gravitationally bound to each other as a binary pair.
The smaller black hole may eventually spiral into the galaxy's centre to merge with the bigger black hole.
But for now, it is too far separated to be gravitationally bound.
"Theorists haven't given much attention to offset TDEs," Yuhan went on.
"But I think this discovery will motivate scientists to look for more examples of this type of event."
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