Reuters: Black hole continues to belch years after chewing up a star
An artist's concept of a tidal disruption event that happens when a star passes fatally close to a supermassive black hole, which reacts by launching a relativistic jet, in this handout image released on June 15, 2018 and obtained by Reuters on February 5, 2026. Steward Observatory assistant astronomer is co-author of a new study that explores "one of the most powerful single cosmic events ever seen."
NRAO/AUI/NSF/NASA/Handout via REUTERS Purchase Licensing Rights
WASHINGTON, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Scientists are observing the behavior of a supermassive black hole that is displaying exceptionally messy eating habits.
Primarily using radio telescopes in New Mexico and South Africa, they are watching the black hole, residing at the center of a galaxy far beyond our Milky Way, as it continues to belch out a fast-moving jet of material after ripping apart and eating a star that made the mistake of wandering too close.
What makes this stellar fatal encounter unusual is the intensity and duration of the black hole's post-meal indigestion.
Material left over from the star did not begin shooting into space until two years after it was shredded into its component gases by the black hole's gravitational forces. But this jet now has been shooting into space for six years - longer than has ever been observed before - and continues to intensify in what has become one of the most powerful single events ever detected in the universe.
"Any object that approaches too close to the event horizon of a black hole risks being torn apart by tidal forces and stretched into a long stream of debris, a process called 'spaghettification,'" University of Arizona astrophysicist and study co-author Kate Alexander said.
"After the star was torn apart, some of this gas fell towards the black hole and heated up, and the black hole began to consume the star. The bright radio light that we see with our telescopes is produced by star stuff that got close to but never actually crossed the event horizon - like a picky baby chewing her food and violently spitting it back out, rather than swallowing it," Alexander said.