All black holes are not the same: there are 'small' ones, just five times the size of our Sun; and there are other gigantic ones, called supermassive, with masses of millions of suns. However, the classification does not end there: there are other intermediate ones, very difficult to discover, and of which there are only a handful of candidates. Now, researchers from the Young Supernova Experiment (YSE) project, a collaboration of astronomers that mainly searches for stars exploding at the end of their lives (supernovae), have just added another possible intermediate mass hole to the list that is also very special: his 'hunger' is so voracious that he is eating a star and throwing his shining 'crumbs' after him. The results have just been published in the journal 'Nature Astronomy'. Using the Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System) observatory, located in Hawaii, the team was able to observe the same patch of sky every few days; The hope was to catch a supernova explosion in the first hours or days after the astronomical phenomenon had occurred. Related News standard Yes 'Neutrino astronomy' takes a giant step José Manuel Nieves standard No Something strange happens at the border of the Solar System José Manuel Nieves But in June 2020 they caught something unexpected among their data: an object that was shining rapidly in a dwarf galaxy almost 1 billion light years away. “We were very, very lucky,” explains Charlotte Angus, from the University of Copenhagen and first author of the study. After this unusual discovery, they continued observing the object, called AT 2020neh, over the following days and weeks, not only with Pan-STARRS, but also with other ground-based observatories and even with the Hubble Space Telescope. Its light curve - that is, how its brightness changes over time - peaked after just over 13 days. Afterwards, a slow and prolonged decrease in its luminosity began. A 'spaghettified' star The shape of the light curve and the characteristics of the light spectrum did not coincide with those of a supernova; It seemed more like a tidal disruption event (TDE), a phenomenon that occurs when a star approaches the event horizon of a black hole and the gravity of the 'monster' is so strong that it part of the star's material is attracted to its center, causing 'spaghettification' of the star and a bright arc of light. However, AT 2020neh still had more surprises in store: it reached its maximum brightness more than twice as fast as a typical TDE. Theorists who model these phenomena predict that smaller black holes produce fast-spiking TDEs. Using such models, the team calculated that the light curve of this hole could have been produced by a black hole with a mass of between 100,000 and 1 million suns. However, very little is still known about these events. Is it a seed for a supermassive black hole? Astronomers believe that most normal-sized galaxies, such as the Milky Way, have a supermassive black hole at their center. But there are other smaller ones, such as the one found at AT 2020neh, in which there is still debate as to whether in its centers there are black holes of intermediate mass like the one detected, which could be proof that, indeed, these objects of intermediate mass from which nothing escapes either, not even light, would be a kind of 'seeds' from which the supermassive ones would grow. The team points out that, either way, finding medium-sized TDEs may be a new way to find the elusive intermediate-mass black holes. And, if they can find a large enough sample, they could study whether the central holes grow at the same rate as the galaxy, as happens with their supermassive 'cousins'. MORE INFORMATION news No What if those who walked through Doñana were not Neanderthals? news No The octopus war, observed for the first time: they throw mud and shells at each other If that premise holds true for everyone, that would support the theory that galaxies grow by merging with each other, instead of originating from a single, gigantic cloud of cosmic dust. The next terrestrial observatories to come, such as the Vera C. Rubin in Chile, or the recently launched James Webb, will be able to point with greater resolution towards these 'elusive' black holes.
