This 'cosmic burp' is making scientists scratch their heads

Black holes are wonders of the Universe. They are the only celestial entities which even light cannot escape from. Though we know a great deal about black holes, something comes along to surprise us and drive home the point that there's always more to know.

A 'cosmic burp' has drawn scientists' attention. Not that such cosmic burps are uncommon in the Universe, but this one's a bit different.

Black holes devour everything that comes within their gravitational grip. A black hole can even gobble up a star. When a star ventures too close to a black hole, it undergoes 'spagettification', that is, it is stretched vertically and compressed horizontally. The star is then gobbled up by the black hole bit by bit. Whatever stellar material the black hole is unable to eat up isthrown out in the Universe. This is called a cosmic burp.

So what's different about the one in question?

A black hole 665 million light years away from Earth ate up a star in 2018. A cosmic burp usually occurs close to eating up of the star. But this black hole ate the star in 2018, and gave a burp in 2021.

What is the reason behind it? We don't know it yet.

'This caught us completely by surprise,' said Yvette Cendes, a research associate at the Center for Astrophysics and lead author on the study of this cosmic burp.

'No one has ever seen anything like this before.'

This study has been published in the Astrophysical Journal.

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