Astellated body shredded by black hole, segments cast towards neighboring star.
A cosmic bully's antics: Researchers have pinpointed a black hole that bullied a star, using the destroyed star's remnants to target another star or small black hole in its vicinity.
These large-scale schoolyard squabbles are a unique form of tidal disruption event, which happens when an object approaches a black hole too closely. This particular tidal disruption event hints at a connection between the black hole's behavior and a specific type of X-ray burst. Investigating these events could shed light on the extreme environments surrounding supermassive black holes and their inhabitants.
Recently, a group of astronomers and astrophysicists studying soft X-ray bursts made a connection between the bursts and tidal disruption events. The bursts were quasi-periodic eruptions (or QPEs)—flashes of X-rays often spotted coming from the centers of galaxies—that followed a tidal disruption event called AT2019qiz, originally discovered in 2019. The researchers who studied the black hole's tidal disruption event shared their findings in Nature.
"We've been pretty excited about the possibility that these phenomena are linked, and now we've gathered the evidence to prove it," said study co-author Dheeraj Pasham, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It's like getting a cosmic two-for-one in terms of solving mysteries."
Tidal disruption events occur when a black hole's intense gravity pulls material from a nearby object, such as a star. If the star is especially close, the black hole stretches it until it's obliterated, a process known as spaghettification. Once the star has been destroyed, its material continues to orbit the black hole, leaving behind a dark, chilling leftover for the much more massive object.
The research group revisited previous observations of AT2019qiz in 2023, collecting ultraviolet and X-ray data on the event using the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The team was able to estimate the size of the supermassive black hole's accretion disk—the collection of shredded material that revolves around the object.
"We've just cracked open a major door in our understanding of the origin of these regular eruptions," said Andrew Mummery, an astrophysicist at Oxford University and a co-author of the paper, in the same release. "We now understand we need to wait a few years for the eruptions to 'turn on' after a star has been torn apart because it takes some time for the disk to spread out far enough to encounter another star."
As we continue to uncover secrets about these astrophysical battlegrounds, researchers are getting better at understanding the key players, from the stars to the accretion disk to the black hole itself. This year, for example, another team witnessed a supermassive black hole roaring back to life after five years of silence.
Future gravitational wave observatories, such as the Einstein telescope and the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), are poised to provide even more insights into black holes and the ripples in spacetime they create. Gaining a deeper understanding of black holes could revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos, from the number of black holes out there to how they form and grow, to their role in shaping the universe.
In the year 2023, researchers revisited the astrophysical phenomena of AT2019qiz using the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, uncovering evidence that points towards a connection between tidal disruption events and quasi-periodic X-ray bursts. This discovery, published in Nature, could provide insights into the extreme environments surrounding supermassive black holes and their inhabitants.
The team was able to estimate the size of the supermassive black hole's accretion disk, which is a collection of shredded material that revolves around the object. They found that it takes a few years for the disk to spread out far enough to encounter another star, leading to the eruptions observed.
According to Dheeraj Pasham, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this finding represents a major breakthrough in understanding the origin of these regular eruptions. As we continue to uncover secrets about cosmic battlegrounds, advancements in future technology, like the Einstein telescope and the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), could provide even more insights into black holes and the ripples in spacetime they create.
This research could revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos, shedding light on the number of black holes out there, how they form and grow, and their role in shaping the universe in the future.