Astronomers have exactly measure out the feeding schedule of a supermassive black hole intimately one billion idle - years from Earth , giving the team an estimation for when its next meal might be .
The mordant kettle of fish is about 50 million times more massive than our Sun and sits at the core of a wandflower about 860 million light - years from Earth . In 2018 , the system containing the smutty pickle rapidly clear up ; keep up - up observations by several NASA telescopes point that the disastrous hole had gobbled up a star that had fly too close-fitting to its event celestial horizon , the gravitational hole beyond which not even light can escape .
The event was atidal disruption , in which a passing object is draw aside by the gravitational power of a black hole . Tidal disruption events are brilliant in the dark sky , especially at X - ray and ultraviolet wavelengths , allowing telescopes like the Chandra X - ray Observatory to spot them .
An artist’s concept of a black hole and a star in the foreground.Illustration: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss
Two long time later , the same system of rules brightened again , suggest that the star had actually survived the earlier event but or else was being slowly picked apart by the ravenous black hole . The team ’s determination werepublishedlast year in The Astrophysical Journal Letters , but new datum taken this month by the Chandra X - ray Observatory confirms the black hole ’s snacking agenda .
“ The telltale preindication of this astral snack ending would be a sudden drop in the X - rays and that ’s on the button what we see in our Chandra observations on Aug. 14 , 2023 , ” say Dheeraj Pasham , an astrophysicist at MIT and lead author of the research , in a NASArelease . “ Our data show that in August last year , the black hole was essentially wiping its oral cavity and pushing back from the table . ”
After seeing the black pickle consume the star stuff , the team predicted another daily round of tidal commotion in August 2023 . That observation came to pass off . In their 2023 paper , the team predicted a “ subsequent rebrightening ” in March 2025 . In today ’s release , subject area co - generator Eric Coughlin that if the star is not already obliterated , the pitch-black hole ’s third repast will occur between May 2025 and August 2025 .
The squad plan to keep an eye on the tidal hurly burly event to better understand how black golf hole interact with their environment . And of course , may a note in your calendars for summertime 2025 — it may be a brilliant one for X - shaft of light enthusiasts .
Black holesstarstidal dislocation eventsx - rays
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