Yogyakarta –
Astronomers discovered a star that emitted a bright flash before being helplessly devoured by it Black hole. This is an epic event in the universe, namely the death of a star by Black hole.
Compiled by detikINET from Futurism, Friday (12/5/2023), this phenomenon is known as a Tidal Disruption Event (TDE). Only 100 such events have been observed and studied by astronomers.
This new TDE, named WTP14adbjsh, was spotted in a galaxy 173 million light years away. So far, it is the closest distance to Planet Earth where the phenomenon in question appears. It is suspected that there are many other TDEs that astronomers have missed.
Usually TDE discoveries use X-rays and UV rays, which are thought to be the main emission from stars that black holes eat. However, in the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters, this new TDE was identified in the infrared light spectrum.
“Finding that close TDE means statistically, there must be a large population of these events that traditional methods cannot track,” said Christos Panagiotou, an MIT astrophysicist. “So we have to try to find this in the infrared if we want a complete picture of black holes and their host galaxies,” he added.
This new discovery explains why TDE is widely observed in older and rarer galaxies. Panagiotou and team believe that interstellar dust obscures X-rays and UV rays, but infrared light penetrates them. In short, it’s likely that many TDEs have yet to be discovered.
“The fact that optical and X-ray surveys missed TDE in the backyard is very illuminating and shows that these surveys are only giving us a partial census of the total TDE population,” said Suvi Gezari, an astronomer who helped pioneer the TDE observations but was not involved in the research.
*This article was written by Mahendra Lavidavayastama, a participant in the Merdeka Campus Certified Internship Program at detikcom.
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(fyk/fay)
2023-05-12 12:17:50
#Phenomenon #Powerless #Stars #Swallowed #Black #Holes
