Tidal disruption event

A tidal disruption event is an astronomical phenomenon that occurs when a star gets too close to a supermassive black hole's event horizon and is pulled apart by the black hole's tidal forces, experiencing spaghettification.[1][2]

It was first proposed in 1975 that tidal disruption events should be an inevitable consequence of black holes in galaxy nuclei, whereas later theorists concluded that the resulting flare of radiation from the accretion of the stellar debris could be a unique signpost for the presence of a dormant black hole in the center of a normal galaxy.[3]

In September 2016, a team from the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui, China, announced that, using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, a stellar tidal disruption event was observed at a known black hole. Another team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S., detected three additional events. In each case, astronomers hypothesized that the astrophysical jet created by the dying star would emit ultraviolet and X-ray radiation, which would be absorbed by dust surrounding the black hole and emitted as infrared radiation. Not only was this infrared emission detected, but they concluded that the delay between the jet's emission of ultraviolet and X-ray radiation and the dust's emission of infrared radiation may be used to estimate the size of the black hole devouring the star.[4]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Astronomers See a Massive Black Hole Tear a Star Apart". Universe today. 28 January 2015. Retrieved 1 February 2015.
  2. ↑ "Tidal Disruption of a Star By a Massive Black Hole". Retrieved 1 February 2015.
  3. ↑ Gezari, Suvi (11 June 2013). "Tidal Disruption Events". Brazilian Journal of Physics. 43 (5-6): 351–355. Bibcode:2013BrJPh..43..351G. doi:10.1007/s13538-013-0136-z.
  4. ↑ Gray, Richard (16 September 2016). "Echoes of a stellar massacre: Gasps of dying stars as they are torn apart by supermassive black holes are detected". Daily Mail. Retrieved 16 September 2016; van Velzen, Sjoert; Mendez, Alexander J.; Krolik, Julian H.; Gorjian, Varoujan (15 September 2016). "Discovery of transient infrared emission from dust heated by stellar tidal disruption flares". The Astrophysical Journal. 829 (1): 19. doi:10.3847/0004-637X/829/1/19; Jiang, Ning; Dou, Liming; Wang, Tinggui; Yang, Chenwei; Lyu, Jianwei; Zhou, Hongyan (1 September 2016). "The WISE Detection of an Infrared Echo in Tidal Disruption Event ASASSN-14li". The Astrophysical Journal Letters. 828 (1): L14. doi:10.3847/2041-8205/828/1/L14.


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