Astronomers have discovered radio echoes from the eating of stars by black holes
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- Astronomers have discovered radio echoes from the eating of stars by black holes
An event in which a black hole tears apart and consumes an approaching star does not end in a rapid flash, but continues in the form of powerful matter emissions months or years later. This was reported by Universe Today magazine on June 29.
Scientists led by Kate Alexander from the University of Arizona observed 31 cases of tidal disruption of stars using a "Large antenna array" in New Mexico. It turned out that after the initial bright flash in the visible, ultraviolet and X-ray ranges, many black holes begin to emit in the radio range after a considerable period of time.
"The radio light shows that the black hole does not consume its food cleanly. Some of the falling gas is ejected back in the form of jets or winds. When this ejected material crashes into the surrounding gas, shock waves are generated that glow in the radio range," the authors of the study note.
According to the results of observations, such emissions are of two types. In some cases, the radio flare is activated for several hundred days while the black hole is still actively absorbing the remnants of the star. In other situations, the signal appears much later, when the power supply process has almost stopped.
Astronomers have also found that objects prone to subsequent radio emissions initially differ in the characteristics of visible light. This allows scientists to determine in advance the most interesting targets for long-term observation. The study confirms that the death of a star in a black hole is not a one-time catastrophe, but a long-term process that directly affects the growth of supermassive objects and the evolution of their surrounding galaxies.
On June 25, Universe Today magazine reported the discovery of 16.5 million stars in the Messier 82 galaxy. According to the publication, new stars are born there 10 times faster than in the Milky Way. Scientists have linked the abnormally high rate of star formation to the collision of an object with a neighboring galaxy in the past. The astronomers also stressed that this process will not last forever: it will last for several hundred million more years by astronomical standards until the gas reserves are completely exhausted.
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