Astronomers Witness the Most , Distant Black Hole Event , in Recorded History.
The Daily Beast reports that researchers have detected
a supermassive black hole swallowing a star 12.4 billion
light-years away in an event dubbed AT2022cmc.
As a star gets close to a black hole, a process referred to as
"spaghettification" begins to pull the star apart, resulting
in an enormous jet of energy detectable from Earth.
This rare process, known as a tidal
disruption event (TDE), was witnessed
by an international team of astronomers.
The observation reportedly gave astronomers valuable
insights into how supermassive black holes are formed
and how our universe looked when it was still young.
The luminous jet of material was
launched almost at the speed of light
and the jet was pointing in our direction. , Igon Andreoni, Astronomer at the University
of Maryland, via The Daily Beast.
This is an extremely rare phenomenon and
it is even rarer that it can be observed at all
because the jet is collimated, which means
that we can observe it only if we are very
close to the direction in which it is pointing, Igon Andreoni, Astronomer at the University
of Maryland, via The Daily Beast.
According to Igon Andreoni, co-leader of the team,
the light from the event traveled for approximately
8.5 billion years before it reached Earth.
This means that the TDE occurred
at a time when the universe was
just one-third of its current age.
The team's work was published
on November 30 in the journals
'Nature' and 'Nature Astronomy.'.
Unveiling a population of such rare transients means that we can greatly improve our understanding of the violent universe, Igon Andreoni, Astronomer at the University
of Maryland, via The Daily Beast