Tuesday, February 23, 2021
TDE ...
A view of the accretion disc around a supermassive black hole, with jet-like structures flowing away from the disc DESY, Science Communication Lab
Something tiny and usually not reacting to entities like us made the scene for the first time resulting from a very distant TDE
aka tidal disruption event
where a black hole shreded a star.
To whit ...
In a distant galaxy, a supermassive black hole ripped a star to bits, sending out an enormous blast of energy.
For the first time, researchers have observed a neutrino that probably came from this type of cataclysm, which is called a tidal disruption event or TDE.
Neutrinos are tiny particles that rarely interact with other matter, making them extremely difficult to detect.
On 1 October 2019, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica spotted a neutrino with relatively high energy that appeared to come from beyond our galaxy.
Meanwhile, Robert Stein at the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) and his colleagues were using the Zwicky Transient Facility in California to watch a star that had got too close to a supermassive black hole. The extreme gravity of the black hole shredded the star, creating a TDE that lasted for months.
The TDE and the IceCube neutrino came from the same location in the sky, indicating that the ripped-up star may have produced the neutrino.
And so it goes.
- K. Vonnegut
No comments:
Post a Comment
Newer Post
Older Post
Home
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment