科學家拍到黑洞撕裂恆星瞬間 簡直震撼

川北在線核心提示：原標題：科學家拍到黑洞撕裂恆星瞬間 簡直震撼 Telescopes have captured the rare light flash from a dying star as it was ripped apart by a supermassive black hole. This rarely seen tidal disruption event which creates spaghettification in stars as they

　　原標題：科學家拍到黑洞撕裂恆星瞬間 簡直震撼

 

　　Telescopes have captured the rare light flash from a dying star as it was ripped apart by a supermassive black hole.

 

　　This rarely seen "tidal disruption event" — which creates spaghettification in stars as they stretch and stretch – is the closest such known event to happen, at only 215 million light-years from Earth. (For comparison, the nearest star system to Earth – Alpha Centauri — is roughly 4 light-years away, and the Milky Way is roughly 200,000 light years in diameter.) One light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers).

 

　　"The idea of a black hole 'sucking in' a nearby star sounds like science fiction. But this is exactly what happens in a tidal disruption event," the new study's lead author Matt Nicholl, a lecturer and Royal Astronomical Society research fellow at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, said in a European Southern Observatory statement. Researchers caught the event in action using numerous telescopes, including ESO's Very Large Telescope and New Technology Telescope.

 

　　"When an unlucky star wanders too close to a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy, the extreme gravitational pull of the black hole shreds the star into thin streams of material," co-author Thomas Wevers said in the same statement. Wevers is an ESO Fellow in Santiago, Chile and was at the Institute of Astronomy at the United Kingdom's University of Cambridge when he did the work.

 

　　It has been difficult to see these events in the past because the black hole eating up the star has a tendency to shoot out material from the dying star, such as dust, that obscures the view, ESO officials said. Luckily, the newly studied event was studied shortly after the star ripped to shreds『

 

　　Researchers studied the event, known as AT 2019qiz, over six months as the flare became bright and then faded away. Observations took place in ultraviolet, optical, X-ray and radio wavelengths. Looking at the event in this comprehensive way showed how the material leaves the star and the flare the star sends as its dying gasp, researchers said.

 

　　The team also estimated the size of the doomed star at about the same mass as our own sun. It didn't have a chance against the black hole, which has a mass of more than 1 million times that of the sun.

 

　　AT 2019qiz also acts as a bellwether for learning about how matter behaves in the extreme environment around supermassive black holes, the team said. A study based on the research was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

　　望遠鏡捕捉到了一顆垂死恆星被超大質量黑洞撕裂時發出的罕見的閃光。

 

　　這一罕見的「 潮汐力瓦解事件」在恆星伸展時產生空間碎片化，是目前已知的距離地球只有2.15億光年的事件。（相比之下，距離地球最近的恆星系統——半人馬座阿爾法星大約距離地球4光年，銀河系直徑約20萬光年。）一光年是光在一年中傳播的距離，大約6萬億英裡（10萬億公裡）。

 

　　「黑洞『吸食』附近恆星的想法聽起來像科幻小說。這項新研究的主要作者、英國伯明罕大學（University of Birmingham）講師、皇家天文學會研究員馬特·尼科爾（Matt Nicholl）在歐洲南方天文臺的一份聲明中說。研究人員用許多望遠鏡捕捉到了這一事件，包括ESO的超大望遠鏡和新技術望遠鏡。

 

　　合著者託馬斯·韋弗斯（Thomas Wevers）在同一份聲明中說：「當一顆不幸的恆星過於靠近星系中心的超大質量黑洞時，黑洞的極端引力會將恆星粉碎成稀薄的物質流。」。韋弗斯是智利聖地牙哥的ESO研究員，當時他在英國劍橋大學天文學研究所工作。

 

　　ESO官員說，在過去很難看到這些事件，因為吞噬恆星的黑洞有一種從垂死恆星噴出物質（如塵埃）的傾向，這會模糊視線。幸運的是，星體在被撕成碎片後就被研究。

 

　　研究人員對這一事件進行了為期6個月的研究，稱為2019qiz，因為耀斑變得明亮，然後逐漸消失。觀測是在紫外線、光學、X射線和射電波段進行的。研究人員說，以這種綜合的方式觀察這一事件，可以看出物質是如何離開恆星的，以及恆星在奄奄一息時發出的耀斑。

 

　　研究小組還估計了這顆命中注定的恆星的大小和我們太陽的質量差不多。它沒有機會對抗黑洞，因為黑洞的質量是太陽的100萬倍。

 

　　研究小組說，在2019年，QIZ還充當了研究物質在超大質量黑洞周圍極端環境中的行為的領頭羊。一項基於這項研究的研究發表在《皇家天文學會月刊》上。

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