Star-eating black hole unleashes the most powerful flare ever recorded
Scientists say the cosmic explosion was 10 trillion times brighter than the Sun.
Astronomers have detected the most energetic flare ever observed from a supermassive black hole, after it tore apart and devoured a massive star that wandered too close.
At its peak, the flare was 10 trillion times brighter than the Sun, according to a study published Tuesday in Nature Astronomy. The event occurred roughly 11 billion light-years away, triggered by a black hole about 300 million times the mass of our Sun.
"It seems reasonable that it was involved in a collision with another massive body in its original orbit, which essentially knocked it in," said Caltech astronomer Matthew Graham, the study's lead author.
A colossal cosmic feeding
The black hole's gravity stretched the doomed star into a thin stream of gas, a process scientists call "spaghettification." As the material spiraled inward, it heated up and emitted an immense burst of energy, creating the record-breaking flare.
Researchers estimate the star was between 30 and 200 times the mass of the Sun, making it unusually large. Stars of that size are extremely rare and short-lived, said K.E. Saavik Ford, co-author and astronomer at the City University of New York.
"Stars this massive are spectacularly rare, both because smaller stars are born more often and because very massive stars live very short lives," Ford explained. The flare brightened by a factor of 40 before peaking in June 2018, and remains visible, though slowly fading. Scientists expect the entire process to last around 11 years.
