Black Hole Eats Star: Researchers Detail Astounding Cosmic Occurrence (VIDEO)

Prepare to have your mind blown.

Back in March, when NASA's Swift spacecraft first detected what scientists believed to be a black hole eating a star 3.8 billion light years from earth, many didn't quite know what it would mean. But now it seems the cosmic event not only sent a beam of X-rays shooting towards earth, but it also rejuvenated the black hole.

NASA has put together a short video imagining the event, which you can see for yourself, below.

"Incredibly, this source is still producing X-rays and may remain bright enough for Swift to observe into next year," said David Burrows, professor of astronomy at Penn State University and lead scientist for the mission's X-Ray Telescope instrument, told NASA. "It behaves unlike anything we've seen before."

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center explains why matter and X-rays are shooting out of the black hole:

As a star falls toward a black hole, it is ripped apart by intense tides. The gas is corralled into a disk that swirls around the black hole and becomes rapidly heated to temperatures of millions of degrees.

The black hole itself is enormous, potentially four times the size of the one at the center of the Milky Way, according to NASA. Even more incredibly, the massive hole seems to be shooting matter out of its center at 80 to 90 percent of the speed of light.

An event like this has never before been seen by scientists.

Earlier this year, NASA reported that the Swift telescope had detected dual black holes, that is, a supermassive blackhole at the center of a galaxy located extremely close to another galaxy with a blackhole at its center--a rarely observed occurrence.

At the 2011 Ted conference, Janna Levin, a professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College, spoke to The Huffington Post about the "sound" of a black hole. Though black holes can't be seen directly, Levin likened their resonance to "someone knocking on the door, or mallets banging on a drum."

WATCH:

Comments

[catb50]

11:37 PM on 09/26/2011

wow, just like my ex devouring mexican food then farting!!

[walt6x3]

04:30 PM on 09/26/2011

A lot more detailed explanation.
http://universe-review.ca/F05-galaxy.htm#blackhole

[walt6x3]

04:28 PM on 09/26/2011

This well help some of you understand way this is escaping from the black hole it has to do with the magnetic field and energy produced in a black hole. http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2008/04/23-02.html

[Doug Girard]

10:30 PM on 09/25/2011

First time I have seen this.
Although I think the implication of this phenomena is interesting, I have one major problem with it.

"NASA has put together a short video imagining the event."

So as a scientist I am supposed to take this video, which is an imagined process, and actually believe it.

Thats like saying the manga 'Inuyasha' is real because its imagined and made into a movie picture.

Perposterous, and holds no scientific value. Shame on you NASA.

[Awndriuh]

07:56 PM on 09/23/2011

I don't know if i missed something. I'm no expect in this area at all but as from my understanding i thought that black holes are like vacuums? I thought that not even light could escape it? And in the video it's coming out of both sides of it.

[Chipher]

04:57 PM on 09/23/2011

"..."someone knocking on the door, or mallets banging on a drum..." Research funding drum.
Hey, now, now, now; black holes, now, now, now; funding comes, now, how, how. Hey-yahh!!

[Anne Duchard]

10:17 AM on 09/23/2011

This is the major destroyer at work. To think these things exist in space that can wipe out just like this can make one loose sleep at night...This is so powerful.

[Tyler-Durden]

09:47 AM on 09/23/2011

if a black hole sucks EVERYTHING IN, how is anything, such as these x-rays, able to shoot back out? isn't that a contradiction of some sort?

if anyone knows where there's an explanation for this, thanx in advance if you could reply here with a link. i think it's pretty interesting stuff and i wish we spent more on learning about our universe than on killing the poor.

[Craig Bovia]

02:57 PM on 09/23/2011

Fanned&Faved
That would require a modicum of intelligence. Christie and Gingrich had that for dinner last night.

[x1cness]

08:19 AM on 09/23/2011

What would happen if a red supergiant would go supernova in the vicinity of a black hole?

[akhenatuh]

10:54 AM on 09/23/2011

Red giants do not go supernova, when it explodes only its outer layers are blown off into space,
only the core is left. This core is called a white dwarf, which is about the size of a small planet in diameter. For a star to go supernova, it has to have a mass of of 2 or more suns like ours. Then a neutron star or black hole is left depending on the mass.

[x1cness]

02:29 AM on 09/26/2011

Ah, thanks. I did not know this.

[LeftLeanWing]

02:53 AM on 09/06/2011

The Monica Lewinsky Galaxy Eater ? _______________________

[kornsawesome87]

05:56 PM on 08/31/2011

Wow, this page is still going, nice!!!!

[Mark Morlock]

04:31 PM on 08/30/2011

Wow and I thought my vacuum cleaner was good at sucking up dirt.

[Querent]

03:04 PM on 08/29/2011

I distinctly remember reading, at some point, "Nothing can escape the gravity of a black hole, which is why we can't see them." Cognitive dissonance.

[John David Redux]

06:15 PM on 08/29/2011

Why would something that straightforward and obvious cause you cognitive dissonance?

[Querent]

07:22 PM on 08/29/2011

Just what I wanted: a giant ego responding to my post. There are x-rays streaming out of the center of the black hole. Why doesn't the overpowering gravity of the black hole prevent this?

[HTXScarface]

05:45 PM on 08/30/2011

You got pwned son! Hawkings style!

[Ashiedu Nwadiei]

01:45 PM on 08/29/2011

That's like watching one animal eat another on National Geographic. Awesome.

[I wasonlydreaming]

02:48 PM on 08/29/2011

It's a star eat star cosmos?
Oh, well...I tried. :p

[ScottV]

01:31 PM on 08/29/2011

Intergalactic garbage disposal. Keeping the universe clean for billions of years.