In June 2021, a radio telescope in New Mexico recorded signs that a black hole has begun to eject matter into surrounding space. The problem was that at that time the black hole hadn’t “eaten” anything for several years.
A team of astronomers has sent six telescopes located on Earth and in space. The observations made it possible to link the ejection of matter with a star engulfed by a black hole three years ago, the researchers said. in a new job.
According to the astronomers, such a phenomenon came as a surprise to them – this is the first time such behavior of a black hole has been observed.
The event was designated AT2018hyz. This is a “tidal break” event in which a star passes too close to a black hole, causing it to break or turn into “spaghetti”. As a result, matter orbits the black hole, forming an accretion disk, instead of being sucked into the event horizon. Here the matter heats up and emits signals that can be seen from the Earth. Sometimes these phenomena occur quickly, sometimes the process takes years.
Black holes devour matter without elegance or precision, often throwing pieces into space. But three years is an unusually long time to chew on a star and spit it out. Usually, in the process of transforming a star into spaghetti, the effects are noticed almost immediately.
In this case, the ejection of matter turned out to be powerful: it accelerated to half the speed of light, although usually the ejected material accelerates to 10% of the speed of light.
Scientists believe this black hole behavior may be more common than previously thought, but more observations of similar phenomena are needed to confirm the theory.
