Scientists are observing the behaviour of \u200ca supermassive black hole that is displaying exceptionally messy eating habits.<\/p>\n
Primarily using radio telescopes in New Mexico, in the United States, and South Africa, they are watching \u200dthe black hole at the centre of a galaxy far from our Milky Way, as it continues to belch a fast-moving jet of material after ripping apart and eating a star that got too close.<\/p>\n
What makes this fatal stellar encounter unusual is the intensity and duration of the black hole\u2019s post-meal indigestion.<\/p>\n
Material left over from the star did not begin shooting \u2060into space until two years after it was shredded into its component gases by the black hole\u2019s gravitational forces. But this jet has been shooting into space for six years \u2013 longer than has been observed before \u2013 and continues to intensify.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe exponential rise in the luminosity of this source is unprecedented,\u201d says University of Oregon astrophysicist Yvette Cendes, lead author of the \u200dstudy published in the Astrophysical Journal on February 5.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s now about 50 times brighter than when it was first discovered, and is now incredibly bright for an object in radio \u200dwaves. This has been going on for years now, and no sign of stopping. That is super unusual.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists are observing the behaviour of \u200ca supermassive black hole that is displaying exceptionally messy eating habits. Primarily…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[57239,400,3146,44852,154639,22024,6075,111,139,69,31174,147,1466,392,118155,1430,36458,32584,154640],"class_list":{"0":"post-274004","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-astrophysical-journal","9":"tag-black-hole","10":"tag-earth","11":"tag-event-horizon","12":"tag-kate-alexander","13":"tag-milky-way","14":"tag-new-mexico","15":"tag-new-zealand","16":"tag-newzealand","17":"tag-nz","18":"tag-red-dwarf","19":"tag-science","20":"tag-south-africa","21":"tag-space","22":"tag-tidal-disruption-event","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-university-of-arizona","25":"tag-university-of-oregon","26":"tag-yvette-cendes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}