NASA animation: black hole sucks in passing star

October 23, 2015 • 10:00 am

On the NASA site you can find this description of a new piece of research about a star encountering a black hole, and observations from X-ray spectral analysis of what happened when it did. Predictably, the results are dramatic, though some of the star stuff doesn’t get sucked all the way in.

I haven’t read the paper (reference and link are below), but you can get the gist at the NASA site. Here’s a precis (more at the site):

New details about what happens when a black hole tears apart a star have been gathered by a trio of orbiting X-ray telescopes, giving scientists an extraordinary opportunity to understand the extreme environment around a black hole.

When a star comes too close to a black hole, the intense gravity of the black hole results in tidal forces that can rip the star apart. In these events, called “tidal disruptions,” some of the stellar debris is flung outward at high speeds, while the rest falls toward the black hole. This causes a distinct X-ray flare that can last for a few years.

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, Swift Gamma-ray Burst Explorer, and ESA/NASA’s XMM-Newton collected different pieces of this astronomical puzzle in a tidal disruption event called ASASSN-14li, originally discovered in an optical search by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) in November 2014.

The event occurred near a supermassive black hole estimated to weigh a few million times the mass of the sun. The black hole is located in the center of PGC 043234, a galaxy that lies about 290 million light years from Earth. This makes this event the closest tidal disruption discovered in a decade.

“We have seen evidence for a handful of tidal disruptions over the years and have developed a lot of ideas of what goes on,” said Jon Miller of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who led the study that is described in a paper published in the latest issue of Nature. “This one is the best chance we have had so far to really understand what happens when a black hole shreds a star.”

Check out this cool video:

It’s a shame I had no head for physics, as if I wasn’t an evolutionary biologist I would have liked to study astronomy and cosmology. Black holes are simply one of the most amazing thing about our Universe.

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Miller, J. M. et al. 2015. Flows of X-ray gas reveal the disruption of a star by a massive black hole. Nature 526:542-545. doi:10.1038/nature15708

28 thoughts on “NASA animation: black hole sucks in passing star”

    1. Yeah, maybe instead of the music they could have kept it silent, and then timed the X-ray flare to a very large BURP! Everything can be elevated with a little humor 😉

  2. This isn’t as visually awesome videos, but there is a new cosmological simulation on display that for the first time can show large scales.

    Homepage with image exposition and video downloads (and science): http://www.magneticum.org/media.html

    The videos are so large I won’t link directly, but well worth the waiting time in my opinion.

    1. I would’ve liked it if the video explained what was happening around the black hole – why the debris around it doesn’t fall in, what causes the polar ejections, etc. I’ve read so many books on cosmology and black holes but it doesn’t stick as I’d like it to because I never learnt the ‘grammar’ of the language, ie. the maths. It’s the difference between, on the one hand, learning a language from being around speakers and picking it up, and on the other hand learning a language from the ground up with the grammatical rules all understood. Without any grasp of the ‘grammar’ I can only reach a certain level of understanding no matter how many books I read.

      1. Check out the ESO YouTube video series. They put out new ones on their research regularly. Their videos are cool too, and they explain what’s happening.

          1. Probably. Not sure. Amy Carparelli tw**ts them to me, so I don’t look them up myself. I’ll get a link for you later when I’m on a device more conducive to finding that sort of thing.

          2. ESO is European Southern Observatory, a fabulous collection of astronomical installations.

            Paranal in the Atacama desert of Chile, home to the VLT, an array of 4 visible light telescopes of 8.2 meters diameter each which can be used independently or combined for visible light interferometry.

            ESO also includes the La Silla, APEX, and ALMA observatories. ESO also is planning to build the E-ELT, a visible light / near infra-red telescope with a 39 meter(!11!!!) diameter primary mirror near the Paranal site. Authorization to start construction was given last year and it is supposed to take about 10 years to complete.

            Of course, Heather may indeed have meant the ESA.

            But, try this link to the ESO’s video page.

          3. It’s the ESO ones that Amy mostly sends me – I’ve found them now. ESA does stuff too, but it’s the ESO ones that are really cool. Thanks Darrelle.

          4. Thanks. Google is pretty good but it doesn’t process requests like Wikipedia, which prompts for disambiguation. It’s more likely to throw an aspect of pop culture at you and assume you are not interested in science.
            ESO is indeed a worth organization to know about. I will subscribe.

  5. At last an explanation of what happened to the planet Krypton which forced Superman’s exodus!

    1. I’d like to imagine that Krypton encountered a yellow sun and the break up of the planet was the result of the entire population suddenly gaining Superman powers with no idea how to control them.

  6. “It’s a shame I had no head for physics, as if I wasn’t an evolutionary biologist I would have liked to study astronomy and cosmology.”

    Conversely, as someone with a Ph.D. in theoretical particle physics, I sometimes wish I’d done evolutionary biology (I certainly had the grades to do a biology degree).

    /@

    1. If we wait long enough the two fields should merge. The merging will give off huge quantities of quantum pheromones.

    2. If I could have done the math I would have for sure studied physics and cosmology. But I’m defective and I must accept my defect.

      I have other qualities. I can touch my tongue to my nose.

    3. As someone who does software engineering for a living, I understand that I can program evolutionary algorithms using technology built upon the knowledge we have from particle Physics, yet have no clue about either. How is it monkeys give birth to humans without being sucked into a black hole again?

  7. Astronomy was my favorite course in undergrad, but I didn’t have the discipline for all the math. Yes, it would have been helpful to have some narration of what is happening in the video.

  8. Well, you’re retired now, right? All sorts of free time on your hands?

    No reason you can’t give yourself the equivalent of a baccalaureate or three in physics and astronomy and the like! Especially since you don’t have the pressure of trying to turn it into a career.

    Pick some phenomenon you’re interested in, look up the latest research, and backtrack from there: as soon as you come across something above your pay grade (likely in the first paragraph), look that up, and keep repeating until you’ve worked your way back to something you can handle. Lather, rinse, repeat.

    …and, should you choose to share your adventures with us, you’re guaranteed of a captivated audience….

    b&

    1. No; you’re thinking of the backhoe that struck the passing car…but, as it turns out, the car was a Nova, which obviously exploded, so the confusion is understandable….

      b&

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