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NASA found a mysterious cosmic event in the universe! Astronomy might be an unknown field, but astronomical observations are crucial for scientific findings. Now, scientists detected something strange in a far away galaxy… a star is being destroyed by a supermassive black hole!
This discovery was made thanks to famous space telescopes like the Hubble, which has been key for many other missions
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This NASA finding is relevant for further studies on science and the unknown outer space. So, let’s see why a star is being absorbed by a black hole and why this event is so strange.
What are black holes?
A black hole is one of the most threatening and mysterious things about the universe. Its gravity is so powerful that it can absorb anything near it, no matter whether it is tangible or not. For example, light can be absorbed too and that’s why it’s so difficult to see them.
Even though many people are scared of them, they are so important for the near stars movement, shaping their galaxy and sometimes creating energy jets travelling through millions of light years.
What about supermassive black holes? Well, these are types of black holes that can be mostly found in the center of galaxies. They are called supermassives for one reason, they have a mass of millions or billions of suns.
What NASA found
We have just mentioned supermassive black holes tend to be in the center of galaxies, right? Well, NASA scientists noticed a very bright ultraviolet light that wasn’t coming from the center of the galaxy, but from a far away place. This caught their attention, so they decided to use powerful tools to study what was happening and they found a supermassive black hole was destroying a star!
Stars going near a black hole
Everytime a star is close enough to a black hole, it starts to pull the star with so much power that the star gets stretched, squashed and broken into little pieces. This phenomenon has its own name, TDE (Tidal Disruption Event), let’s explain it!
‘Tidal’ is the gravity power that stretches things, and ‘Disruption’ means destruction. So, when this event happens, it releases a huge amount of energy that can even be seen by Earth telescopes.
But, how can a black hole get out of the center of a galaxy?
Astronomers were very shocked about this situation and they thought about two possible theories:
One of them is galactic mergers: this happens when two galaxies crash and join, then its black holes join too. However, one of them might be pushed out to the limits of the new galaxy. It’s kind of like if they were fighting to see which has the best place.
The other theory is interaction between multiple black holes: this means a gravitational push takes place and throws a black hole out of the center of the galaxy.
Telescopes to see the invisible black holes
As we previously said, black holes are invisible for us, so to detect them scientists need specific tools and NASA has some powerful ones:
- The Zwicky Transient Facility: this telescope observes the sky every single night trying to find explosions or new lights.
- The Hubble Space Telescope: this one is more famous and it takes very detailed pictures of space from out of the Earth’s atmosphere.
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The James Webb Space Telescope
: this is the most modern and powerful one. It can see light others can’t.
Should we worry about this?
Not really because there is no black hole near Earth, but this event has to do with Earth too. It can help scientists to know more about the unknown of black holes because some of them are so quiet that they don’t even emit any light and telescopes can’t detect them.However, what NASA found was very useful because it made the black hole to brighten and be found.
This is a huge success for NASA because, from now on, they can learn about how black holes move, how they are created and change galaxies, and what other secrets the universe hides in far away places.
So, never underestimate any NASA finding because everything has to do with us, we are all connected!
