Latest news with #SpaceJaws'
USA Today
4 hours ago
- Science
- USA Today
Black holes caught devouring massive stars in biggest explosion since Big Bang
Black holes caught devouring massive stars in biggest explosion since Big Bang The three examples astronomers highlighted in a new study describe supermassive black holes feasting on stars more than three times as massive as our own sun. Supermassive black holes lurk all throughout the known universe, but catching one in the act of devouring its cosmic dinner doesn't happen all that often. In fact, unless a black hole is actively in the middle of eating gas, dust or massive stars, the ominous entities remain invisible to us. It's when black holes emerge out of hiding to feast on their prey and some type of matter is sucked into their celestial maw that they begin to glow brightly. And recently, a team of astronomers from the University of Hawaii may have seen more than they anticipated. Using both space and ground-based data, the researchers uncovered black hole events so packed with energy, they said they represented the biggest explosions since the Big Bang. The three examples the team highlighted in a new study describe supermassive black holes feasting on stars more than three times as massive as our own sun. The events, dubbed 'extreme nuclear transients,' are not only more rare than a supernova star explosion, but are more powerful than 100 supernovae combined, the team claimed. Here's what to know about how the powerful forces may have shaped galaxies and how the discovery may help astronomers better study black holes. What are black holes? Supermassive black holes, regions of space where the pull of gravity is so intense that even light doesn't have enough energy to escape, are often considered terrors of the known universe. When any object gets close to a supermassive black hole, it's typically ensnared in a powerful gravitational pull. That's due to the event horizon – a theoretical boundary known as the "point of no return" where light and other radiation can no longer escape. As their name implies, supermassive black holes are enormous (Sagittarius A*, located at the center of our Milky Way, is 4.3 million times bigger than the sun.) They're also scarily destructive and perplexing sources of enigma for astronomers who have long sought to learn more about entities that humans can't really get anywhere near. Black holes: NASA finds supermassive black hole it calls 'Space Jaws' Supermassive black holes seen eating giant stars Each of the supermassive black holes the researchers described lies at the center of a distant galaxy. And each were observed to have suddenly brightened for several months after shredding up a star three to 10 times heavier than our sun – unleashing enormous amounts of radiations across their host galaxies. The scientists involved in the new study described these rare occurrences as a new category of cosmic events called 'extreme nuclear transients.' One of the transient events the astronomers looked at released 25 times more energy than the most powerful supernova on record ‒ radiating in one year the amount of energy equal to the lifetime output of 100 of our suns. Since just 10% of early black holes are actively eating gas and dust, extreme nuclear transients are a different way to find black holes across vast cosmic distances, which in astronomy means peering back in time, Benjamin Shappee, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii who co-authored the study, said in a statement. 'These events are the only way we can have a spotlight that we can shine on otherwise inactive massive black holes,' Jason Hinkle, graduate student at the University of Hawaii who led the new study, added in a statement. Discovery comes after detection of 'space jaws' The new discovery was announced not long after NASA's famed Hubble Space Telescope helped uncover another covert black hole that had long eluded detection. That supermassive black hole was so menacing that NASA even dubbed it in a blog post as "space jaws" – a reference to Steven Spielberg's famous 1975 shark film. "Space jaws" revealed itself to astronomers earlier in 2025 with a spectacular burst of radiation known as a tidal disruption event that was so large and so bright that several NASA instruments were able to detect it 600 million light-years from Earth. Finding 'extreme nuclear transients' could unveil more black holes In the University of Hawaii's study, researchers examined three black holes discovered within the last decade. One of the star-destroying events, nicknamed 'Barbie' because of its catalog identifier ZTF20abrbeie, was discovered in 2020 by the Zwicky Transient Facility at Caltech's Palomar Observatory in California. The other two black holes were first detected by the European Space Agency's Gaia mission in 2016 and 2018. Data from a number of spacecraft and ground-based observatories helped the team confirm their findings. Though the team concluded the events to be rare, the extreme brightness they produced means they can be seen even in extremely distant galaxies. Astronomers who took part in the study say looking for more of these extreme nuclear transients could help unveil more supermassive black holes in the universe that are usually quiet. The team's findings were published Wednesday, June 4, in the journal Science Advances. Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@
Daily Record
15-05-2025
- Science
- Daily Record
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. Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today. You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team. All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in! If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. 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."
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Jupiter's auroras put Earth's to shame. NASA's Webb just got a stunning look at them
If you thought the flickering green and red auroras of Earth were spectacular, that's nothing compared to Jupiter. New observations from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have revealed that the dancing lights on our solar system's largest planet are hundreds of times brighter than those seen on Earth. The enormous display recently documented in infrared by Webb – and compared to ultraviolet data from the Hubble Space Telescope – has raised unexpected questions about Jupiter's extreme environment. It goes without saying that us humans won't ever be getting a first-person glimpse of Jupiter's auroras – unlike the northern lights that unveil themselves here on Earth every now and again. But thanks to Webb, we can at least enjoy some spectacular photos of the stunning phenomenon. Black holes: NASA finds supermassive black hole called 'Space Jaws' feasting on wayward stars Here's a look at what the NASA James Webb Space Telescope captured, and what to know about Jupiter's auroral activity: Auroras are created when high-energy particles enter a planet's atmosphere near its magnetic poles and collide with atoms or molecules of gas. On Earth, these are known as the northern lights (aurora borealis) and the southern lights, or aurora australis. Earth's auroras form when charged particles from the sun rain down on the planet's upper atmosphere to unleash solar storms, which energize gases and caused them to glow in shades of red, green and purple. The natural light display in Earth's sky is famously best seen in high-latitude regions of the Northern and Southern hemispheres. But it can sometimes be more widely visible if a particularly powerful solar flare hits Earth's magnetosphere, the barrier protecting humanity from the harshest effects of space weather. Jupiter's auroras, though, put Earth's to shame. Not only are the auroras on Jupiter gigantic, they are hundreds of times more energetic than those in Earth's atmosphere, according to NASA. That's because the gas giant has something of an advantage: the planet's strong magnetic field is capable of grabbing charged particles from not only the sun, but its orbiting moon Io. Io is an infamous world teeming with violent volcanoes spewing particles that can escape the moon's gravity and sneak into Jupiter's orbit. As Jupiter captures all of the charged particles, its magnetic field accelerates them to tremendous speeds before they slam into the planet's atmosphere to stir up gas, causing it to glow. Now, Webb's powerful instruments are helping scientists on Earth understand more about the auroras on Jupiter – challenging previous assumptions about the planet's magnetic field and particle interactions. Data captured Dec. 25, 2023, with Webb's s Near-Infrared Camera, or NIRCam, was recently analyzed by a team of scientists led by Jonathan Nichols, an astronomer at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. By studying the emissions created in the planet's auroras, scientists expected to learn how quickly the auroras change. They expected to see them fade in and out, but instead, "we observed the whole auroral region fizzing and popping with light, sometimes varying by the second,' Nichols said in a statement. 'It just blew me away," he added. The observations will help scientists better understand how Jupiter's upper atmosphere is heated and cooled, according to the researchers. The team also intends to conduct more observations with Webb, which they can compare with data from NASA's Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter for nine years. The research was published May 12, 2025, in the journal Nature Communications. In other Jupiter-related news, a robotic spacecraft on its way to study another Jovian moon recently made a pitstop at Mars. The Europa Clipper probe, which is on a 1.8 billion-mile journey to the moon Europa, is traveling past Mars and Earth – a trajectory that allows it to use both planets' gravity as a slingshot to add speed to the trek. While recently swinging by Mars, the uncrewed vehicle took the opportunity March 1 to capture some infrared images of the Red Planet, which NASA shared on May 12. NASA says the data will help mission scientists determine whether the spacecraft's thermal imaging instrument is operating correctly before the Clipper reaches its destination. NASA launched the uncrewed Europa Clipper in October 2024 from Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a far-reaching journey to one of Jupiter's many moons, where water is believed to exist beneath an icy surface. Once the orbiter reaches the icy moon Europa in 2030, it will begin scouring the surface from above to look for signs that life could thrive. Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@ This article originally appeared on Florida Today: NASA's Webb telescope unveils stunning auroras on Jupiter: See photos
