Black Hole Devours Star: Source Of Mysterious Flash In Distant Galaxy Determined

LOS ANGELES — Astronomers think they have solved the mystery of an extraordinary flash spied in a faraway galaxy, saying it came from a massive black hole that devoured a star after it wandered too close.

The awesome energy released by the feeding frenzy was first detected by NASA's Swift satellite on March 28 and was later confirmed by a fleet of space and ground telescopes.

Some scientists initially thought the bright flash was a gamma-ray burst from a star collapsing, but flaring from such an event typically lasts only a few hours.

Instead of fading, the cosmic outburst continued to burn bright and emit high-energy radiation that could be observed even today.

Two separate teams pored through data and concluded that an unsuspecting star the size of our sun likely got sucked in by the powerful tug of a giant black hole. Until then, the black hole had been relatively inactive. The findings were published online Thursday in the journal Science.

As the black hole gobbled up the star, it streamed a beam of energy straight at Earth that was recorded by telescopes. The stellar feast occurred in the heart of a galaxy 3.8 billion light years from Earth. A light year is about 6 trillion miles.

"This was clearly different than anything we've ever seen before," said one of the team leaders, Joshua Bloom, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley who classified the event as extremely rare.

Black holes are swirling, super-dense cores of galaxies that vacuum up nearly everything in sight. How they grow so huge remains a mystery. Scientists think the latest observation could help them better understand how galaxies form.

Could what happened in the distant galaxy occur in our Milky Way? In theory yes, say scientists, but the chances are low.

"It's not something worth losing sleep over," said researcher Andrew Levan of University of Warwick in England, who led the other team.

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Online:

Science: http://www.sciencemag.org

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Alicia Chang can be followed at: http://twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

Comments

[horsey]

01:18 AM on 06/19/2011

"one light year is 6 trillion miles"....that's a real mind stretch

[scottyknows]

05:43 PM on 06/18/2011

Well, I'm glad they think they know something.

[capt ayhab]

09:48 AM on 06/18/2011

So this event occurred 3.6 billion years ago and we are just seeing it?

[palindrom]

04:47 PM on 06/18/2011

Yes.

[HLL]

06:25 PM on 06/19/2011

Fascinating. I love astronomy, but then, I've been a Trekkie since childhood ;-)

[scottyknows]

05:45 PM on 06/18/2011

Only if the speed of light was always constant. Some scientist believe it has been slowing since the beginning.

[palindrom]

09:33 PM on 06/18/2011

"Some scientist believe it has been slowing since the beginning. "

True enough, but not very many.

[Squeak E Mouse]

05:14 AM on 06/18/2011

An ''unsuspecting'' star got sucked in. So if the black hole had not been so well camouflaged the star would have rumbled it and done a runner. All little stars are warned by their parents to stay away from seedy black holes.

Black holes vacuum up ''nearly everything in sight''. If you're nice to them or don't taste really good they let you off.

How about.. a star fell into the gravitational pull of a black hole.

''It's not something worth losing sleep over'' Nice to meet a man who is passionate about his work.

[David305]

02:18 PM on 06/17/2011

All of this created for Adam and Eve? God is either an overzealous landlord or simply a myth.

[AtticusinPa]

03:50 PM on 06/17/2011

Yeah, and 3.8 billion years ago. How old did Bishop Usher say the earth was?

[robphilnz]

05:01 PM on 06/17/2011

You haven't learned this "fact"? "3rd October 4004 BCE at 9 o'clock in the morning". It's the very foundation of Cretin Science.

[PenguinLinux]

01:19 PM on 06/17/2011

The star is to normal people as the black hole is to teabaggers because being around them sucks your soul and your intelligence to the point of no return.

[emphatico]

12:51 PM on 06/17/2011

Guesses! We can't even, as yet, definitively solve the mystery of whether or not there is life on Mars -- which is relatively closer (actually in the same galaxy as our home) -- yet we think we can solve the mysteries of a far more distant galaxy.

[Steve Lives]

01:34 PM on 06/17/2011

Ya, in this case it appears so. A highly educated guess, but a guess nonetheless. Maybe, it was God winking at us from his current vacation spot ;)

[robphilnz]

05:46 PM on 06/17/2011

Flow of conciousness begins.

According to Cretin Science, of course, God made that flash to fool unbelievers into being fooled into being further misled - just as he did by leaving fossils which only appear to be millions of years old.

Which makes one wonder why God is so perverse as to assist the devil to mislead humanity, which leads to realisation that it was Satan who gave mankind intelligence and science?

Which leads to another conclusion: Teabaggers and evangelicals are truly God's elect, having never been touched with Satan's gift of intelligence.

[aviandonn]

10:40 PM on 06/17/2011

LOL. So many paths to enlightenment, so little time.

[scottyknows]

05:41 PM on 06/18/2011

Is zealous hatred of others part of your new-found enlightenment?

[henrydeluxe]

12:40 PM on 06/17/2011

Nothing but guesses, today's cosmological assumptions will be viewed by future generations with the same amused attitude as we see flat earthers today.

[WheresMyParty]

07:14 PM on 06/17/2011

But not the way we view Eratosthenes, who first proved the world was spherical around 240 BC.

[scottyknows]

05:42 PM on 06/18/2011

The flat Earth myth was truly a myth no one believed in.

[palindrom]

09:49 PM on 06/18/2011

An easy statement to make, but not necessarily and accurate one. "Nothing but guesses ... " -- if you knew the subject well, you'd know how untrue this is. Modern cosmology may be wrong, but it is based on an astonishing set of highly accurate measurements that were unavailable a few decades ago. Anything that supersedes it will have to explain these measurements.

[henrydeluxe]

02:55 PM on 06/19/2011

They might be highly accurate measurements, but they still get filtered thru a model, in this case a defective one and one that appears to insist in fitting a large round peg into a small square hole. if you know anything abut math then you know that assumptions are key in getting certain results. what we a here is a flawed theory contradicted over and over, but maintained by an orthodoxy unwilling to take no for an answer. this particular observation is simply unexplainable by current theory, it would a lot more scientific t suspend judgement instead of this macho attitude of always pretending to have an answer even when they don't. Nothing wrong with saying- we don't know.....

[JJR60616]

12:03 PM on 06/17/2011

Ok...is it just me or did anyone else, when seeing the headline "What Happens When A Black Hole Devours A Star?" immediately think of Hugh Grant?!?

[PotholesInMyLawn]

12:02 PM on 06/17/2011

"Black holes are swirling, super-dense cores of galaxies that vacuum up nearly everything in sight."

Such junk science...

A better sentence would be ... "Black holes are these things out there in space that we know nothing about."

It would be wise to use the word Theory a lot more when talking about space stuff!

[Steve Lives]

01:43 PM on 06/17/2011

Its not by seeing, touching, smelling, or hearing them that we know they are there. It's physics. Now I will admit it is unlikely that we know all there is to know about physics now, but if what we do know is applied, bingo you have your black hole. And a theory in the scientific realm is not the same as a theory you and your beer drinking buddies have. In science, a theory is a collection of facts and data that support the conclusion. In the bar, its opinion and ignorance that supports the conclusion. Do you know what I mean?

[PotholesInMyLawn]

02:02 PM on 06/17/2011

hey hey take it easy.... I was just kidding around. I love space.. I get it... I was just making a joke!

[dnnyshdy]

08:59 PM on 06/17/2011

If a theory is supported by facts it would be a theory now would it.Look up the definition for theory genius.

[greengrl]

01:44 PM on 06/17/2011

Obviously you should look up the work theory. A theory in science is an idea supported by a body of evidence and facts...i.e. the Theory of Gravity, the Theory of Relativity, the Theory of Plate Techtonics, and yes...whether the backward Right likes it or not...the Theory of Evolution. A theory is not a guess or an hypothesis. You are using theory in lay terms, not scientific terms, which is completely different.

Astronomers freely admit they understand little about black holes, so there is no theory. As for the sentence you mention being junk science, black holes do swirl, they are in the center of galaxies, and they do pull everything in due to their immense gravity.

[PotholesInMyLawn]

02:04 PM on 06/17/2011

As I said to the other guy that ripped into me... I was just kidding around. Making some jokes.

I see the the Star Trekers are out in full force!!!!

[dnnyshdy]

09:00 PM on 06/17/2011

I guess you've seen one personally.Look up the definition for theory.

[kingofthenet]

11:46 AM on 06/17/2011

The headline is a bit sensational, Black Holes don't 'suck' anything more than any ordinary sun with the same mass. Earth sucks in cosmic debris all the time, Jupiter does so MUCH stronger and suns and Black holes stronger still.

[SoCalNick]

11:36 AM on 06/17/2011

Black holes have devoured ALL of the real Stars.

The void has been filled by the likes of the Khardasians, Paris Hilton and all the assorted " Reality tv personalities.

That is all

[aadunlapesq]

11:36 AM on 06/17/2011

an unsuspecting star? we need to send somebody to the sun to keep it informed!

[ReedYoung]

12:03 PM on 06/17/2011

Note that's the AP, not a Huffington Post writer. I can recall the good old days, when the AP was only vaguely conservative-biased, but were at least capable of "just the facts" journalistic writing style. {sigh}

[AtticusinPa]

03:52 PM on 06/17/2011

Governor Palin is currently available.

[Elvyn Jones]

11:30 AM on 06/17/2011

" . . . concluded that an unsuspecting star the size of our sun likely got sucked in by the powerful tug of a giant black hole much like a fly that can't escape a frog resting on a lily pad."

It's true. The Flying Spaghetti Monster put giant frogs in the core of most galaxies. The universal background radiation noise some fools think to be the faith echo of the Big Band is actually billions of ribits of these sun-devouring behemoths.

[Tammi K]

08:32 AM on 06/18/2011

My thoughts exactly.

[ProCynic]

11:25 AM on 06/17/2011

Please tell me it devoured Jennifer Love Hewitt or Lady Gaga.

[erie]

06:54 PM on 06/20/2011

Nope, only their talents have gone missing, though I think that's been the case from the beginning.