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Black hole shreds star, sparking gamma ray flash

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By Reuters Monday, June 20th, 2011 -- 7:47 am

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A monster black hole shredded a Sun-like star, producing a strangely long-lasting flash of gamma rays that probably won't be seen again in a million years, astronomers reported on Thursday. That is definitely not the norm for gamma ray bursts, energetic blasts that typically flare up and end in a matter of seconds or milliseconds, often the sign of the death throes of a collapsing star. "This is truly different from any explosive event we have seen before," said Joshua Bloom of the University of CaliforniaBerkeley, a co-author of research on the blast published in the journal Science. Initially spied on March 28 by NASA's Swift spacecraft, which is trolling the universe for gamma ray bursts, this particular flash has lasted more than two months and is still going on, Bloom said in a telephone interview. What makes this even stranger is that the black hole, located in the constellation Draco (The Dragon) about 4 billion light years, or 24 sextillion miles (38.62 sextillion km) -- 24 followed by 21 zeroes -- from Earth, was sitting quietly, not eating much, when a star about the mass of our Sun moved into range. "We have this otherwise dormant black hole, not gobbling up an appreciable amount of mass, and along comes this star which just happens to be on some orbit which puts it close to the black hole," Bloom said. FEEDING FRENZY "This was a black hole which was otherwise quiescent and it sort of has an impulsive feeding frenzy on this one star," he said. Bloom figures this may happen once per black hole per million years. This kind of behavior is different from what active black holes generally do, which is to suck in everything their vast gravity can pull in, even light. Most galaxies, including our Milky Way, are thought to harbor black holes in their hearts. Black holes are invisible, but astronomers can infer their existence because the material they pull in lights up before it gets sucked in. In this case, though, the black hole feasted on one star -- about the same mass as our Sun -- with such relish that it tore the star apart before gulping it down. As it did so, the black hole emitted powerful gamma ray jets from its center as bits of the dying star were turned into energy. The black hole's gravitational pull was so great that it exerted what's called a tidal disruption on the passing star. Astronomers could use this observation to help them learn more about how black holes grow, Bloom said. "We still don't understand how black holes and the universe grow," he said. "We think most black holes start off as being no more than the mass of our Sun ... How they go from 10 solar masses to a billion solar masses is critical." There is a strong connection between the mass of black holes and the mass of the galaxies that host them, with black holes feeding on gas and stars that come near. (Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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Black hole shreds star, sparking gamma ray flash

Deborah Zabarenko Reuters US Online Report Science News Jun 20, 2011 07:31 EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A monster black hole shredded a Sun-like star, producing a strangely long-lasting flash of gamma rays that probably won't be seen again in a million years, astronomers reported on Thursday. That is definitely not the norm for gamma ray bursts, energetic blasts that typically flare up and end in a matter of seconds or milliseconds, often the sign of the death throes of a collapsing star. "This is truly different from any explosive event we have seen before," said Joshua Bloom of the University of CaliforniaBerkeley, a co-author of research on the blast published in the journal Science. Initially spied on March 28 by NASA's Swift spacecraft, which is trolling the universe for gamma ray bursts, this particular flash has lasted more than two months and is still going on, Bloom said in a telephone interview. What makes this even stranger is that the black hole, located in the constellation Draco (The Dragon) about 4 billion light years, or 24 sextillion miles (38.62 sextillion km) -- 24 followed by 21 zeroes -- from Earth, was sitting quietly, not eating much, when a star about the mass of our Sun moved into range. "We have this otherwise dormant black hole, not gobbling up an appreciable amount of mass, and along comes this star which just happens to be on some orbit which puts it close to the black hole," Bloom said. FEEDING FRENZY "This was a black hole which was otherwise quiescent and it sort of has an impulsive feeding frenzy on this one star," he said. Bloom figures this may happen once per black hole per million years. This kind of behavior is different from what active black holes generally do, which is to suck in everything their vast gravity can pull in, even light. Most galaxies, including our Milky Way, are thought to harbor black holes in their hearts. Black holes are invisible, but astronomers can infer their existence because the material they pull in lights up before it gets sucked in. In this case, though, the black hole feasted on one star -- about the same mass as our Sun -- with such relish that it tore the star apart before gulping it down. As it did so, the black hole emitted powerful gamma ray jets from its center as bits of the dying star were turned into energy. The black hole's gravitational pull was so great that it exerted what's called a tidal disruption on the passing star. Astronomers could use this observation to help them learn more about how black holes grow, Bloom said. "We still don't understand how black holes and the universe grow," he said. "We think most black holes start off as being no more than the mass of our Sun ... How they go from 10 solar masses to a billion solar masses is critical." There is a strong connection between the mass of black holes and the mass of the galaxies that host them, with black holes feeding on gas and stars that come near. (Editing by Cynthia Osterman) Source: Reuters US Online Report Science News
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RawReader 30 minutes ago

Very very cool. The personification language is fun but cursory: "Most galaxies...are thought to harbor black holes in their hearts" -- ooo, galaxies thought to be good are harboring evil hungry black holes in their hearts....and you never know when they might get hungry! Chomp chomp. Couldn't the reason that it takes awhile to "consume" this star is that its capacity for matter isn't as great as other more "ravenous" black holes and so the "meal" takes longer to "digest"?
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RobertHe 37 minutes ago

This is a repackaging of an Agence France-Presse article Raw Story ran last week. Unless there is someone on the staff who is very enthusiastic about gamma ray bursts I see no reason running it again. However, I acknowledge that the science writing is considerably better this time.
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Jammer5 51 minutes ago

It's that damn koch kartel gobbling up anything they can. They're not satisfied with just the earth, now they're going after stars. What was that? It's a black hole? Never mind: It's that damn Obama sucking the life out of stars. Okay. Got it now. See how easy science is?
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Cussin' Jack 1 hour ago

It's fun to "Muse" about such things. (not-so-veiled pun on band name and song "Super-Masive Black Hole")
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moxaman 3 hours ago

I'm wondering of a black hole is a conduit to an alternate universe of some sort. It's amazing that whatever gets sucked into it disappears into some other void. What is on the other side of a black hole? Hmm.......
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seePlusPlus 6 minutes ago in reply to moxaman

That's a valid question, there is still a lot unknown about black holes because they require both quantum mechanics and relativity to characterize properly, and unifying these two is still an unsolved problem. That's why black hole people are usually also Grand Unified Theory people, since you can't solve the one without the other. A lot of people have noticed the interesting symmetries between black holes and the Big Bang, almost as if they were two aspects of the same thing... Because of the way black holes affect the spacetime around them, it's quite a challenge to come up with a way to explain things that isn't confusing to a layman. There just aren't any everyday experiences that you can use as analogies, it's very frustrating. I'm sure it would be quite a trip to see this event, but I'm glad I'm not there actually.
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BillFromDover 3 hours ago in reply to moxaman

What makes you assume that black holes even have another side?
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H.P. Loathecraft 1 hour ago in reply to BillFromDover

A black hole is described as a region of space with particular properties. Since all known regions of space have more than two dimensions, we can safely conclude it has another side.
1 person liked this. Like Reply

red_velvet27 1 hour ago in reply to H.P. Loathecraft

No, we can't safely conclude that black holes have another side because we have no conclusive proof.
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