Scientists are shocked as a black hole emits something they have never seen before.
When a black hole rips apart and devours a star, it isn't particularly noteworthy news because black holes always do that.
But scientists only begin to pay attention when, years later, that black hole begins to spew material from a star.
Recently, a black hole in a galaxy 665 million light years away unexpectedly displayed this particular behavior,surprising scientists.
In 2018, a star with a mass one-tenth that of the Sun was sucked into the black hole. Black holes frequently hurl some of the star material they've devoured back into space,
but this usually occurs during or right after the eating event. It has never been done before to send the effluent back into space after a period of time.
Using radio data from the Very Large Array in New Mexico, a team at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian discovered that the black hole
was still emitting light as recently as June 2021.It was determined by the scientists that material is being ejected from the black hole at a speed of half the speed of light.
The tidal disruption is one of the most radio-luminous tidal disruption episodes ever detected, according to their observations.When a neighboring star gets ingested by
or "spaghettified" by a black hole, tidal disruption events, or TDEs, take place.The star gets stretched out and consumed by the black hole's powerful gravity during a tidal
disruption events.Observing observatories can detect a massive flash produced by super heated matter spiraling around a black hole from millions of light years away.
Another intriguing aspect of this TDE is that material is being ejected from the black hole at a speed that is half that of light.