'Space Jaws': NASA Reveals Roaming Monster Black Hole That's Eating Stars
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Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the cosmos, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a terrifying, roving, oft-invisible monster dubbed "Space Jaws."
Lurking 600 million light-years away, the supermassive black hole—which has the same mass as some 1 million suns—betrayed its presence when it was caught shredding and then devouring a poor star that got too close.
Dubbed AT2024tvd, the burst of radiation from this "tidal disruption event" (TDE) was also picked up by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Large Array in New Mexico and Caltech's Palomar Observatory.
Together, the observations revealed that this TDE is unique among the 100-odd detected to date—as it doesn't appear to come from the core of the black hole's host galaxy.
An artist's impression of a supermassive black hole devouring a star.
An artist's impression of a supermassive black hole devouring a star.
NASA, ESA, STScI, Ralf Crawford STScI
"Theorists have predicted that a population of massive black holes located away from the centers of galaxies must exist, but now we can use TDEs to find them," said paper author and astronomer professor Ryan Chornock of the University of California, Berkeley explained in a statement.
"AT2024tvd is the first offset TVD captured by optical sky surveys and it open up the entire possibility of uncovering this elusive population of wandering black holes with future sky surveys," added paper lead and UC Berkeley astrophysicist Yuhan Yao.
Yao added: "Right now, theorists haven't given much attention to offset TDEs. I think this discovery will motivate scientists to look for more examples of this type of event."
The galaxy (orange) and the tidal disruption event (blue) as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory.
The galaxy (orange) and the tidal disruption event (blue) as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory.
NASA, ESA, STScI, Yuhan Yao UC Berkeley); Joseph DePasquale (STScI
In AT2024tvd's host galaxy, there is a second, larger black hole in the galactic core—one weighing some 100 million times the mass of the sun.
Despite being in the same galaxy, the two supermassive holes are not bound together as a gravitational pair.
At present, the two black holes are separated by only around 2,600 light-years (roughly one-tenth of the distance between Earth and Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way's central black hole), with the smaller hole moving around the host galaxy's bulge.
In the future, the smaller black hole may spiral into its larger peer, resulting in the two merging together.
As to how the smaller black hole got so far off-center—it is possible that there were originally three black holes in the galaxy's core, and the other two kicked the runt out of the litter.
This, Yao says, would explain the roaming black hole's current positioning. She explained: "If the black hole went through a triple interaction with two other black holes in the galaxy's core, it can still remain bound to the galaxy, orbiting around the central region."
Alternatively, it is possible that the smaller black hole was once at the center of another, smaller galaxy that collided with the host galaxy at least a billion years ago.
Paper co-author and astronomer Erica Hammerstein, also of UC Berkeley, did not find any evidence of a past galaxy merger in Hubble's images of the galaxy.
However, she said: "There is already good evidence that galaxy mergers enhance TDE rates, but the presence of a second black hole in AT2024tvd's host galaxy means that at some point in this galaxy's past, a merger must have happened."
The full findings of the study will be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about black holes? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.
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