A stellar spectacle has been witnessed by astronomers: a black hole's feast on a 'super star' unleashing an energy equivalent to 400 billion suns. This cosmic event, dubbed 'the Whippet,' is a Tidal Disruption Event (TDE) of epic proportions. TDEs occur when stars venture too close to black holes, their immense gravity squashing and stretching the stars into strands of 'stellar spaghetti.' This stellar spaghetti twists around the black hole, forming an accretion disk that gradually nourishes the cosmic giant. However, black holes are messy eaters, and some of the ex-stellar matter is ejected in parallel jets.
The Whippet, first spotted by the Zwicky Transient Facility at Palomar Observatory in California, resembled a Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient (LFBOT), a brilliant burst of light visible from billions of light-years away. LFBOTs, lasting a few days, emit high-energy radiation across the blue end of the optical spectrum, through ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths. While dozens of these events have been detected, their true nature remains elusive, though scientists link them to star destruction.
Further investigation revealed a powerful shock wave propagating outwards from the central source at 20% the speed of light, slamming into surrounding gas. These shockwaves dissipated after half an Earth year, reaching the outer bubble of gas from the destroyed star. Interestingly, helium was observed moving away from the source at 13 million mph, suggesting a surviving, densely bound structure moving towards us at 750 times the speed of NASA's space shuttle.
The team speculates this could be a stream of material launched by the star's core as it was 'spaghettified' by the black hole. Alternatively, it might be generated by a third body in the system, blasted by particles and X-rays from the black hole's feast. The research, presented at the American Astronomical Society conference, has been accepted for publication in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
