Scientists say they have seen a black hole 'vomit' like never before. Here's what it means
Black hole spits out star eaten several years ago. Representative GIF: NASA
The universe is a big, black mystery even though the answers may be right in front of us. Scientists have made a new discovery and they say no one has probably ever seen anything like this before.
What have the scientists discovered? A black hole 'vomited' out a star it had eaten. While this phenomenon is not out of the ordinary, what was strange was that the black hole spit out the star nearly 2 years after it had eaten it.
- Scientists call black holes, messy eaters. Usually, black holes burp out the eaten star immediately.
Who made the discoveries? A team of astrologers in the US led by Yvette Cendes first observed the star getting eaten in October 2018.
What happened? A small star that had come too close to the black hole located in a galaxy 665 million light years away from Earth was stretched, spaghettified and ripped to shreds.
- Then there was radio silence from AT2018hyz, the TDE or tidal disruption event.
- But in June 2021, the scientists saw the black hole lighting up again and rushed to observe it.
- They found that the black hole was spewing the most luminous TDEs ever observed.
- This was strange because the black hole had not eaten up anything recently.
- The team concluded that the black hole is throwing up material traveling at half of the speed of light.
- It is unknown why the "outflow" has been delayed by several years.
Recently, scientists have been making new observations about black holes. A recent study proved one of Albert Einstein's theories on gravity as two black holes that collided with each in 2020 were said to have "wobbled" during the process. In another case, Indian researchers found a rare supermassive black hole spewing a jet of radiation and particles only in one direction instead of firing jets in opposite directions.