Scientists capture the moment when a star is swallowed by a black hole Science and health

• Scientists create a simulated wormhole and bring fantasy closer to reality
• Signs of “other dimensions” in matter ejected by black holes

Astronomer Michael Coughlin, of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, US, explained in an article in Science alert🇧🇷 He adds: “From the data we have, we can estimate that aircraft were fired in only 1% of these devastating events, making AT2022cmc an extremely rare event. In fact, the bright flash from the event is among the brightest ever observed.”

There is a lot going on in the universe, and various events—supernovae, stellar collisions, the madness-feeding black hole—are unpredictable, setting off temporary flares of light that glow and then fade. Only by closely observing large regions of the sky can the light from these cosmic events be captured.

In February 2022, the Zwicky Transient Facility (Astronomical Observation Project) captured an explosion. Immediately, 20 other telescopes around the world and in space jumped into action, capturing a wealth of data about the sudden blaze in the days and weeks that followed.

From this wealth of information, a team of researchers—led by Coughlin and astronomer Igor Andreoni of the University of Maryland—determined that the event was caused by a supermassive black hole spinning at about 500 million times the mass of Earth. , gobbling up stellar material at a rate of “half a sun a year”.

“Things looked pretty normal for the first three days. Then we analyzed it with an X-ray telescope and found that the source was very bright,” says astronomer Dheeraj Pasham of MIT, who led the second paper. “This particular event was 100 times more powerful than the most powerful gamma-ray burst. It was something extraordinary,” he adds.

Watch a simulation: