BA: Star torn apart by a black hole

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BA: Star torn apart by a black hole

Post by bystander » Thu Apr 07, 2011 4:19 pm

Astronomers may have witnessed a star torn apart by a black hole
Discover Blogs | Bad Astronomy | 2011 Apr 05
On March 28, 2011, NASA’s Swift satellite caught a flash of high-energy X-rays pouring in from deep space. Swift is designed to do this, and since its launch in 2004 has seen hundreds of such things, usually caused by stars exploding at the ends of their lives.

But this time was hardly "usual". It didn’t see a star exploding as a supernova, it saw a star literally getting torn apart as it fell too close to a black hole!

The event was labeled GRB 110328A –a gamma-ray burst seen in 2011, third month (March) on the 28th day (in other words, last week). Normal gamma-ray bursts are when supermassive stars collapse (or ultra-dense neutron stars merge) to form a black hole. This releases a titanic amount of energy, which can be seen clear across the Universe.

And those last two characteristics are certainly true of GRB 110328A; it’s nearly four billion light years away1, and the ferocity of its final moments is not to be underestimated: it peaked at a solid one trillion times the Sun’s brightness!

Yegads. I’m rather glad this happened so far away. That’s not the kind of thing I’d like to see up close.

Although initially cataloged as a GRB, followup observations indicated this was no usual event. The way the light grew and faded seemed to fit better with a star getting torn apart. And what can do that to an entire star? A black hole. So instead of the star in question forming a black hole, it apparently literally fell victim to one!
The observations indicate the black hole in question may have as much as half a million times the mass of the Sun, meaning it’s very probably a supermassive black hole in the very center of a distant galaxy. Hubble Space Telescope observations (not yet released to the public) also place the event very near the center of a galaxy, which is consistent with this scenario.

So what happened?

We think that at the center of every large galaxy (including our own Milky Way) lies a supermassive black hole, some with millions or even billions of times the Sun’s mass. Some of these, like our own, are sitting there quietly. Without matter falling into them, black holes are pretty calm. But if a gas cloud, say, wanders too close, it forms a disk around the hole called an accretion disk. This disk heats up and can emit tremendous amounts of light (as in this illustration here). Some galaxies are continuously feeding of material like this, and we call them active galaxies.

In the case of GRB 110328A, something else happened. The galaxy is known to be quiet; NASA’s Fermi satellite can see gamma rays over much of the sky, and has reported no emission from this galaxy for the past couple of years. So whatever happened here was a singular event.

What fits all the data is that of a star orbiting the center of the black hole. Perhaps it was on a safe orbit but got flung closer to the black hole after a close encounter with another star or gas cloud, or perhaps it started out close and over millions of years its orbit has brought it closer and closer to that monster at the galaxy’s heart.
Whatever happened, the star’s life ended suddenly and catastrophically. Black holes have incredibly strong gravity, of course, but that gravity gets weaker with distance. Stars are big, a million or more kilometers across, and that means one side of the star was substantially closer to the black hole than the other, so the near side felt a stronger pull of gravity than the far side of the star. This has the effect of stretching the star in a process called tides.

A star is held together by its own gravity. As the star in question here inched closer to the black hole, the force stretching the star got stronger, and at some point overcame its internal gravity. The star got literally torn apart by the black hole!

The material swirled around the black hole, forming a small and temporary accretion disk. Observations indicate that for a short time, two beams of matter and energy called jets erupted from the doomed star the black hole, and it was the flash of tremendous energy from this that triggered Swift, and a flurry of observations from other telescopes cascaded from that.

It’s not certain that this is actually what happened so far away in the core of that far-flung galaxy, but it does fit what’s seen so far (and at least one other star has been seen to have been eaten by a black hole before). It also predicts that radio emission from the event will be highly variable, and that the visible brightness should brighten again over the next few weeks. Astronomers are eagerly observing this distant event to see if their ideas will still hold true as time goes on, or if more surprises are in store.

And I need to add something to this story. I used to work on Fermi and Swift, writing educational stories and activities based on their observations, but that was many years ago. I don’t keep up with their daily doings so much.

I actually found out about GRB 110328A when I got an email the other day from my friend Adria Updike, who observes GRBs. She told me an amazing thing: a colleague of hers, PhD candidate Alexander Kann, started a thread on the Bad Astronomy/Universe Today Bulletin Board about the GRB. BAUT, as we call the board, was started by my friend Fraser Cain of Universe Today and myself, hence the name of the board.

Another astronomer friend of mine, Bill Keel, is also a BAUT member. He read the thread, and used the SARA 1-meter telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona, to observe the burst:
On the left is his observation on April 1, and on the right on April 4. The position of GRB 110328A is circled. As you can see, it was pretty faint. It has apparently faded somewhat over the three day interval — which is expected; the initial event (a star getting torn apart! I can’t get over that!) released a huge flash of energy which faded over time. It’s hard to see in the two images because the burst looks about the same brightness, but the second observation had a longer exposure time (you can see fainter stars in it), so the source did fade.

With observations in hand, Adria and Bill sent out a circular2, a note to the community about what they saw:
  • We observed the field of GRB 110328A/Swift J164449.3+573451 (Cummings
    et al., GCN 11823) on April 1 at 11:50 UT (3.96 days after the trigger) for
    20 minutes in the R band with the SARA North telescope at KPNO. At the
    location of the optical counterpart (Cenko et al., GCN 11827; Volnova et al.,
    GCN 11837) we marginally detect the transient at R = 21.7 +/- 0.3 [...]

    This GCN resulted from a collaboration initiated by the BAUTforum.
[Emphasis mine]

Note the credit they give to BAUT. Awesome. Never underestimate the power of social media, especially in the sciences. You never know how far they reach… and in this case, that reach was 3.872 billion light years.
  1. [*] Or, to be pedantic, it took nearly four billion years for the light from the explosion to get here.
    [*] GRB 110328A / Swift J164449.3+573451 | GCN Circ archive: Swift, Optical, Radio, redshift[/i]
Followup on the star torn apart by a black hole: Hubble picture
Discover Blogs | Bad Astronomy | 2011 Apr 07
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Re: BA: Star torn apart by a black hole

Post by bystander » Thu Apr 07, 2011 5:23 pm

NASA Telescopes Join Forces to Observe Unprecedented Explosion
NASA GSFC | Francis Reddy | 2011 Apr 07
[attachment=1]533746main_grb110328a_1280.jpg[/attachment]
[attachment=0]533792main_XRT_lightcurve_960.jpg[/attachment]
NASA's Swift, Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory have teamed up to study one of the most puzzling cosmic blasts yet observed. More than a week later, high-energy radiation continues to brighten and fade from its location.

Astronomers say they have never seen anything this bright, long-lasting and variable before. Usually, gamma-ray bursts mark the destruction of a massive star, but flaring emission from these events never lasts more than a few hours.

Although research is ongoing, astronomers say that the unusual blast likely arose when a star wandered too close to its galaxy's central black hole. Intense tidal forces tore the star apart, and the infalling gas continues to stream toward the hole. According to this model, the spinning black hole formed an outflowing jet along its rotational axis. A powerful blast of X- and gamma rays is seen if this jet is pointed in our direction.

On March 28, Swift's Burst Alert Telescope discovered the source in the constellation Draco when it erupted with the first in a series of powerful X-ray blasts. The satellite determined a position for the explosion, now cataloged as gamma-ray burst (GRB) 110328A, and informed astronomers worldwide.

As dozens of telescopes turned to study the spot, astronomers quickly noticed that a small, distant galaxy appeared very near the Swift position. A deep image taken by Hubble on April 4 pinpoints the source of the explosion at the center of this galaxy, which lies 3.8 billion light-years away.

That same day, astronomers used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to make a four-hour-long exposure of the puzzling source. The image, which locates the object 10 times more precisely than Swift can, shows that it lies at the center of the galaxy Hubble imaged.

"We know of objects in our own galaxy that can produce repeated bursts, but they are thousands to millions of times less powerful than the bursts we are seeing now. This is truly extraordinary," said Andrew Fruchter at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

"We have been eagerly awaiting the Hubble observation," said Neil Gehrels, the lead scientist for Swift at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "The fact that the explosion occurred in the center of a galaxy tells us it is most likely associated with a massive black hole. This solves a key question about the mysterious event."

Most galaxies, including our own, contain central black holes with millions of times the sun's mass; those in the largest galaxies can be a thousand times larger. The disrupted star probably succumbed to a black hole less massive than the Milky Way's, which has a mass four million times that of our sun

Astronomers previously have detected stars disrupted by supermassive black holes, but none have shown the X-ray brightness and variability seen in GRB 110328A. The source has repeatedly flared. Since April 3, for example, it has brightened by more than five times.

Scientists think that the X-rays may be coming from matter moving near the speed of light in a particle jet that forms as the star's gas falls toward the black hole.

"The best explanation at the moment is that we happen to be looking down the barrel of this jet," said Andrew Levan at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, who led the Chandra observations. "When we look straight down these jets, a brightness boost lets us view details we might otherwise miss."

This brightness increase, which is called relativistic beaming, occurs when matter moving close to the speed of light is viewed nearly head on.

Astronomers plan additional Hubble observations to see if the galaxy's core changes brightness.
Hubble Pinpoints Source of Mysterious Outbursts
NASA | Space Telescope Science Institute | HubbleSite | 2011 Apr 07
NASA's Swift satellite, Hubble Space Telescope, and Chandra X-ray Observatory have teamed up to study one of the most puzzling cosmic blasts ever observed. More than a week later, high-energy radiation continues to brighten and fade from its location. Astronomers say they have never seen such a bright, variable, high-energy, long-lasting burst before. Usually, gamma-ray bursts mark the destruction of a massive star, and flaring emission from these events never lasts more than a few hours.

On Monday, March 28, 2011, the Swift satellite's Burst Alert Telescope discovered the source in the constellation Draco when it erupted with the first in a series of powerful blasts. Swift determined a position for the explosion, which is now cataloged as gamma-ray burst (GRB) 110328A, and informed astronomers worldwide. As dozens of telescopes turned to the spot, astronomers quickly noticed a small, distant galaxy very near the Swift position. A deep image, taken by Hubble on Monday, April 4, 2011, pinpointed the source of the explosion at the center of this galaxy, which lies 3.8 billion light-years away from Earth. That same day, astronomers used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to make a four-hour-long exposure of the puzzling source. The image, which locates the X-ray object 10 times more precisely than Swift, shows that the source lies at the center of the galaxy Hubble imaged.

Astronomers previously have detected stars disrupted by supermassive black holes, but none have shown the X-ray brightness and variability seen in GRB 110328A. The source has undergone numerous flares. Since Sunday, April 3, it has brightened by more than five times. Although research is ongoing, astronomers feel the unusual blast likely arose when a star wandered too close to its galaxy's central black hole. Intense tidal forces tore the star apart, and the infalling gas continues to stream toward the hole. According to this model, the spinning black hole formed an outflowing jet along its rotational axis. A powerful blast of X-rays and gamma rays is seen if this jet is pointed in our direction.

Hubble observations of GRB 110328A's host galaxy were taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 in visible and near-infrared light. This Hubble image of the galaxy was taken in visible light. Astronomers plan additional Hubble observations to see if the galaxy's core changes brightness.
GRB 110328A: Chandra Observes Extraordinary Event
Chandra X-ray Observatory | 2011 Apr 07
Click to view full size image 1 or image 2
The center of this image contains an extraordinary gamma-ray burst (GRB) called GRB 110328A, observed with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. This Chandra observation confirms the association of GRB 110328A with the core of a distant galaxy and shows that it was an exceptionally long lived and luminous event compared to other GRBs.

The red cross (roll your mouse over the image) shows the position of a faint galaxy - located about 3.8 billion light years from Earth - observed with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini-North telescope on the ground. Allowing for experimental errors, the position of the galaxy is indistinguishable from that of the X-ray source, showing that the source is located close to the middle of the galaxy. This is consistent with the idea, suggested by some astronomers, that a star was torn apart by a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. This idea differs from the usual interpretation for a GRB, involving the production of a jet when a black hole or neutron star forms after the collapse of a massive star or a merger between two neutron stars.

Remarkably, this "tidal disruption" event may have been caught in real time, rather than detected later from analyzing archival observations. However, this X-ray source is about a hundred times brighter than previously observed tidal disruptions. One possible explanation for this very bright radiation is that debris from the disrupted star fell towards the black hole in a disk and the swirling, magnetized matter generated intense electromagnetic fields that created a powerful jet of particles. If this jet is pointed toward Earth it would boost the observed brightness of the source. This scenario has already been suggested by observers to explain the bright and variable X-ray emission observed by NASA's Swift telescope.

This observation was part of a so-called target of opportunity, or TOO, led by Andrew Levan from the University of Warwick in the UK. A TOO allows the telescope to react quickly to unpredictable cosmic events, within 24 hours in some situations. Chandra scientists and engineers can decide to alter the scheduled observations and instead point the telescope to another target if the circumstances warrant it. This process was put into place once the discovery of GRB 110328A with Swift was announced on March 28th, 2011. The Chandra team was able to reset the telescope's schedule to observe GRB 110328A early in the morning of Monday, April 4th for a period of just over four hours.
Attachments
GRB 110328A has repeatedly flared in the days following its discovery by Swift.<br />This plot shows the brightness changes recorded by Swift's X-ray Telescope.<br />(Credit: NASA/Swift/Penn State/J. Kennea)
GRB 110328A has repeatedly flared in the days following its discovery by Swift.
This plot shows the brightness changes recorded by Swift's X-ray Telescope.
(Credit: NASA/Swift/Penn State/J. Kennea)
Images from Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical (white, purple) and X-ray telescopes<br />(yellow and red) were combined in this view of GRB 110328A. The blast was<br />detected only in X-rays, which were collected over 3.4 hours on March 28.<br />(Credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler)
Images from Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical (white, purple) and X-ray telescopes
(yellow and red) were combined in this view of GRB 110328A. The blast was
detected only in X-rays, which were collected over 3.4 hours on March 28.
(Credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler)
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USydney: A star is torn

Post by bystander » Mon Aug 15, 2011 11:17 pm

A star is torn
University of Sydney | 2011 Aug 08
A University of Sydney researcher was part of an international team of astronomers that has observed an incredibly rare event that occurs once every 10,000 years per galaxy.
The astronomers saw a star that had strayed too close to a super massive black hole being literally torn apart. The Australian, Dr Sean Farrell, an ARC post-doctoral fellow in the School of Physics, said the observation was first made in 2006 through the European Space Agency's X-ray Telescope, XMM-Newton.

The astronomers were researching archival data when they noticed the bright flare, which they realised was the signature of a star being ripped apart in a galaxy 500 million light years away.

The star, initially detected in 2006 by Dr Dacheng Lin, who led the study, was observed again in 2007, by which time it had increased in brightness. Dr Lin researched data from 1992, which showed there was no trace on any X-ray source dating back to that time.

In February 2011, using NASA's SWIFT X-ray Telescope, Lin observed the area again and found the flare had dimmed significantly. It was then that the international collaborators knew they had witnessed something truly astonishing.

"Dr Lin's research raised the possibility that we had indeed stumbled onto a very rare extreme event," says Dr Farrell. "We were very lucky that the telescope happened to have this event in its field of view.

"Of course when we realised that the star had been obliterated because it had gone too close to a super massive black hole we knew what we had observed was something even more extraordinary."

Super massive black holes (SMBH) have been theoretically predicted by theories Einstein wrote in 1915, but little is known about them. "We know that they exist in the middle of galaxies and have three known traits: mass, spin and charge.

"The first two of these can be measured but the third cannot. We do know if something goes into a SMBH it will never be seen again," says Dr Farrell. "So to have witnessed such a rare event provides us with an incredible opportunity to study what happens to stars when they get too close to the edge of a SMBH."

Dr Farrell says that these observations will be important for testing theories on gravity as well as helping us understand how SMBH grow or 'feed'. "Black holes are crucial in how galaxies form and evolve. This is very important as their influence on galaxies has an enormous effect on gas, stars, planets, and, of course, life itself," Dr Farrell explains.

"By studying the boundaries of black holes we can gain crucial knowledge about these extreme objects and their impact in the universe."

Discovery of an Ultrasoft X-ray Transient Source in the 2XMM Catalog: a Tidal Disruption Event Candidate -D Lin et al
  • arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1106.0744 > 03 Jun 2011 (v1), 17 Jun 2011 (v2)
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Re: BA: Star torn apart by a black hole

Post by neufer » Tue Aug 16, 2011 3:56 am

Click to play embedded YouTube video.
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Re: BA: Star torn apart by a black hole

Post by Beyond » Tue Aug 16, 2011 4:43 am

The thing about black holes is; if a black hole eats another black hole, has it eaten the whole thing, the hole thing, or the whole hole thing :?:
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Re: BA: Star torn apart by a black hole

Post by bystander » Tue Aug 16, 2011 5:10 am

The whole hole! There's no such thing as half a hole (or any other partial hole).
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Re: BA: Star torn apart by a black hole

Post by neufer » Tue Aug 16, 2011 3:12 pm

bystander wrote:
Beyond wrote:
if a black hole eats another black hole, has it eaten the whole thing, the hole thing, or the whole hole thing :?:
The whole hole! There's no such thing as half a hole.
If it takes two grown men 74 minutes to dig one whole pun, how many men does it take to dig half a hole pun in 108 seconds :?:
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m-ZVsLf070&NR=1[/youtube]
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Re: BA: Star torn apart by a black hole

Post by Ann » Tue Aug 16, 2011 3:34 pm

Beyond wrote:The thing about black holes is; if a black hole eats another black hole, has it eaten the whole thing, the hole thing, or the whole hole thing :?:
Image
Any hole may be good to eat.

Not just the black ones.




A few years ago there was a Swedish comedy show about a clumsy knight who loved to eat Swedish crispbread, particularly the hole in the middle. He would often give away the bread as long as he could keep the hole - the whole hole. Yummy!!!















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Wasa Matter?

Post by neufer » Tue Aug 16, 2011 4:28 pm

Ann wrote:
A few years ago there was a Swedish comedy show about a clumsy knight who loved to eat Swedish crispbread, particularly the hole in the middle. He would often give away the bread as long as he could keep the hole - the whole hole. Yummy!!!

  • The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the
    Knäcke out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved livvy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisp_bread wrote:
<<Crisp bread or hard bread (Swedish: knäckebröd, hårt bröd, hårdbröd, spisbröd, Danish: knækbrød, Norwegian: knekkebrød, Finnish: näkkileipä, hapankorppu, Icelandic: hrökkbrauð, German: Knäckebrot or Knäcke) is a flat and dry type of bread or cracker, containing mostly rye flour. Crisp bread has been baked in central Sweden since 500 AD. It was made as round wafers with a hole in the middle so the bread could be stored on sticks under the roof. The largest brand is the Swedish company Wasabröd with Finn Crisp being the second largest producer. Traditional crisp bread was invented about 500 years ago. It is popular in armies and schools because of its light weight and simple, transport-friendly shape. Also, it is very cheap and if stored in dry conditions it will keep fresh and edible for a very long time. Crisp bread is a staple food and was for a long time considered a poor man's diet.However, in recent years there has been renewed interest in crisp bread in the Nordic countries.>>
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Re: BA: Star torn apart by a black hole

Post by Ann » Tue Aug 16, 2011 5:17 pm

Wow, imagine that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisp_bread knows about knäckebröd! And image that James Joyce knew about it, too!!! :o So then it follows, doesn't it, that some parts of Finnegan's Wake actually mean something? Even though they are full of holes?
Image


But I think we should upgrade the diet of those poor folks who like to eat the holes of edible things. The hole of some hard, dry rye bread can't be nearly as good as the hole of a donut, eh, Rob?







Image
And why limit the eating of holes to the holes of edible things? If you eat the right hole, you will have infinity at your fingertips. Or at least at the corners of your lips.



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Re: BA: Star torn apart by a black hole

Post by Beyond » Tue Aug 16, 2011 5:43 pm

Well.... Now that i've stopped laughing at the whole hole-le-ness going on, i wonder just what the heck it is that causes all that gravity of black holes. Perhaps black holes are where all the Higgs Bosons are hiding, and that's what gives the black holes so much mass to have so much gravity :?:
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Re: BA: Star torn apart by a black hole

Post by rstevenson » Tue Aug 16, 2011 6:07 pm

Image
Image

I once tried to make a Möbius Donut, by wrapping the icing around it like a Möbius Strip. It was so messy I had to eat the result.

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Re: BA: Star torn apart by a black hole

Post by neufer » Tue Aug 16, 2011 6:23 pm

rstevenson wrote:
I once tried to make a Möbius Donut, by wrapping the icing around it like a Möbius Strip.
It was so messy I had to eat the result.
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
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Re: BA: Star torn apart by a black hole

Post by rstevenson » Wed Aug 17, 2011 12:40 am

I can see three problems there...
1. too many conceptualizers
2. they used a commercial mix -- ick!
3. the "baker" didn't have a clue what he was doing

I particularly recognized problem 3 because that could have been me when I first started up my donut machine. I made donuts for five days before I was sure I could charge money for them. Only the hardy few managed to be taste testers for all five days, but they got a generous reward. (Actually, only I and my long-suffering spouse saw and nibbled the day one batches.)

Rob (aka Donut Dude)

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