Astronomers spot 18 black holes devouring stars in cosmic feast

A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has unveiled the existence of 18 new black holes engaged in a stellar frenzy, tearing apart stars and consuming their remnants.

This discovery more than doubles the known cases of Tidal Disruption Events (TDEs) in theuniverse and throws light on the broader occurrence of these dramatic phenomena.

"People were coming up with very exotic solutions to these puzzles, and now we’ve come to the point where we can resolve all of them," a team member and assistant professor of physics at MITErin Kara said.

TDEs occur when stars venture too close to black holes, experiencing extreme gravitational forces that lead to "spaghettification," a process where the star is stretched vertically and squashed horizontally.

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The material from the disrupted star forms a flattened disk around the black hole, with some accreting to the black hole's centre, and the rest being expelled as near-light speed jets.

The MIT team's quest began after they discovered the closest TDE to Earth ever observed, witnessed as a flare from the galaxy NGC 7392, located 137 million light-years away.

Utilising infrared light and an algorithm analysing patterns in data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE), they identified transient bursts of radiation, leading to the discovery of 18 legitimate TDE signals.

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Contrary to previous beliefs, these TDEs were found to occur across a diverse range of galaxies, challenging the notion that they were exclusive to post-starburst galaxies.

The team's lead author, Megan Masterson, stated, "If you looked up in the sky and saw a bunch of galaxies, the TDEs would occur representatively in all of them."

The research also addressed the discrepancy in energy radiation from TDEs, attributing it to dust-absorbing optical and X-ray emissions, along with extreme ultraviolet radiation.

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The MIT team estimated that galaxies experience a TDE approximately once every 50,000 years."This gives us confidence that we don't need all this exotic physics to explain what we’re seeing," said Erin Kara.

"And we have a better handle on the mechanics behind how a star gets ripped apart and gobbled up by a black hole. We’re understanding these systems better,"Kara added.

(With inputs from agencies)