Supermassive black holes rip apart stars 100 times more often than previously thought, report researchers.
Until now, such stellar cannibalism—known as Tidal Distruption Events, or TDEs—had only been found in surveys which observed many thousands of galaxies, leading astronomers to believe they were exceptionally rare: only one event every 10,000 to 100,000 years per galaxy.
However, new study recorded a star being destroyed by a supermassive black hole in a survey of just 15 galaxies—an extremely small sample size by astronomy standards.
“Each of these 15 galaxies is undergoing a ‘cosmic collision’ with a neighboring galaxy,” says James Mullaney, lecturer in astronomy at the University of Sheffield and coauthor of the study in Nature: Astronomy.
“Our surprising findings show that the rate of TDEs dramatically increases when galaxies collide. This is likely due to the fact that the collisions lead to large numbers of stars being formed close to the central supermassive black holes in the two galaxies as they merge together.”
No escape
The supermassive black holes that lurk in the hearts of all large galaxies can be elusive. This is because they don’t shine in a conventional sense due to their gravity being so strong that nothing can escape, not even light itself. However, the release of energy as stars are ripped apart when they move close to the black holes leads to dramatic flares.
The galaxies’ nuclei can then appear as bright as all the billions of stars in a typical galaxy combined. In this way, TDEs can be used to locate otherwise dim black holes and study their strong gravity and how they accrete matter.
“Our team first observed the 15 colliding galaxies in the sample in 2005, during a previous project,” sys Rob Spence, PhD student and coauthor of the study.
“However, when we observed the sample again in 2015, we noticed that one galaxy—F01004-2237—appeared strikingly different. This led us to look at data from the Catalina Sky Survey, which monitors the brightness of objects in the sky over time. We found that in 2010, the brightness of F01004-2237 flared dramatically.”
This intense flare was a black hole destroying a star
The particular combination of variability and post-flare spectrum observed in F01004-2237—which is 1.7 billion light years from Earth—was unlike any known supernova or active galactic nucleus, but characteristic of TDEs.
TDEs in the Milky Way
“Based on our results for F01004-2237, we expect that TDE events will become common in our own Milky Way galaxy when it eventually merges with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy in about 5 billion years,” says Clive Tadhunter, professor of astrophysics and leader of the study.
“Looking towards the centre of the Milky Way at the time of the merger we’d see a flare approximately every 10 to 100 years. The flares would be visible to the naked eye and appear much brighter than any other star or planet in the night sky.”
The UK Science and Technology Facilities Council supported the work. Observations used in the study come from the William Herschel Telescope on the island of La Palma, which the Isaac Newton Group in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canaria operates. The study also used data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the Catalina Sky Survey.
Source: University of Sheffield
