Black hole caught committing 'stellar homicide'

[SivVulk]

Astronomers have caught a black hole in the midst of a violent act, watching in real time as it tore a sun-like star apart with gravitational forces so strong that helium gas was flowing in a stream moving at 32 million kilometers an hour.

"We saw the messy carnage involved in this stellar homicide," said Dr. Suvi Gezari, associate research scientist with Johns Hopkins University's department of physics and astronomy. Gezari spoke to CBC Radio host Bob McDonald in an interview that airs on Quirks & Quarks on Saturday, May 5, at noon.

It was the most direct evidence ever gathered of a black hole destroying a star. Black holes, regions of space weighing millions of times more than the sun, are extremely difficult to find because they're only detectable if there is gas spiralling into them — something that might happen once every 100,000 years in any given galaxy.

The star's destruction was so bright it outshone the other stars in that galaxy, which is about 2.7 billion light years away.

“We were watching in real-time, but we still actually didn’t figure out what this event was until almost a year later,” Gazari said.

http://www.canadaka.net/link.php?id=75080


In case you were wondering, 32 million km/hr is 19.9 million miles per hour

[garyd]

Where does all that energy go?

[Jim Colyer]

They say black holes are everywhere.

[hadit]

Where does all that energy go?

Some of it goes into the black hole itself, but a lot is ejected from its poles on the way in.

[86Dùde]

I'm not sure there is a known way to predict where it goes. I don't believe you can measure it. You definitely can't observe it when known physics become void in the singularity.

[Going Postal]

Thanks for my new wallpaper.