Astronomers said they have detected a mysterious and incredibly intense blast of visible light pointing straight toward Earth coming from a black massive hole.
The light appeared to give off more light than 1,000 trillion suns, and came out of a part of the sky where no such light had been observed before, astronomers said, according to The Independent. The finding prompted excitement among the scientists who were watching, the news outlet reported.
Scientists believe that the light comes out of one of those jetted-TDEs, named AT 2022cmc. The jet probably formed when a black hole suddenly started eating a nearby star, shooting energy through the universe – and right at us.
They found that it was coming from incredibly far away, and further away than any other similar event. The light that had reached Earth started on its journey across space when the universe was about a third of the age it is now. The discovery was only possible because the jet is pointing almost directly at Earth, astronomers said.
When stars get too close to a black hole, they are torn to shreds and the blast can be detected throughout the universe. The event is known as a tidal disruption event, or TDE, and in about 1 percent of cases, they send plasma and radiation out of each side of the black hole.
“The light was so unusually bright and visible because the jet is pointing right at us, meaning that it is both more intense than usual and can be seen over a broader part of the electromagnetic spectrum,” the report states.
Scientists hope that the discovery can be used to find even more, allowing them to be better understood and give further detail about black holes.
The findings are reported in two new papers. One, ‘A very luminous jet from the disruption of a star by a massive black hole’, is published in Nature; the other, ‘The Birth of a Relativistic Jet Following the Disruption of a Star by a Cosmological Black Hole’, is published in Nature Astronomy.
