Astronomers Witness Phenomenal Black Hole Devouring A Star: But What Is A Black Hole?

Scientific Astronomers Witness For The First Time A Massive Black Hole Devouring A star

For the first time Scientists have witnessed an event believed to only occur once in a 100 million years, a colossal black hole destroying and devouring a star.

This extraordinary event was caused by stellar debris being eaten by the black hole known in scientific terms as ‘relativistic jet’ that stretches thousands of light years in length, but if you’re interested in knowing just how far the powerful jets reach then it’s a simple calculation:

1 light year =a unit of length equal to just under 10 trillion kilometres.

This stunning event  took place in the universe four billion light years away.

How Does A Black Hole Form?

Now what exactly is a black hole?

According to astronomical interpretation, it is a region in space from which nothing including light can escape and thus called black.

Around a black hole is a mathematically defined surface known as an Event Horizon that eerily marks the point of no return because when anything passes this area all the light is absorbed.

A Black hole forms when massive star three times the mass of the Sun collapses due to the influence of its own crushing gravity leaving in its wake a compact black hole.

A supernova can take billions of years to reach the end of its life. This happens when it is no longer able to create the nuclear energy that it needs. Its nuclear fuel therefore runs out and the star stops burning and begins to heat up and explode. The explosion is so powerful that its enough to produce a burst of radiation so bright that it can briefly outshine the entire galaxy before eventually fading over several weeks or months.

The radius of the star shrinks to a critical size known as the Schwarzschild Radius (the distance from the center of an object if all the mass of the object were compressed within that sphere) and begins to devour anything and everything that comes too close to surface or Event Horizon, which includes light. The gigantic hole consists of a large mass compacted so densely that nothing can escape its force of gravity, eventually the star caves in and implodes.

Solar Masses: Pistol Star

The outer shells of the star explode into the space, but may have already fallen into the growing dense black hole making it even heavier and denser, this is how a stellar mass black hole is created by swallowing up millions of solar masses (The Sun=1 solar mass)  becoming more and more powerful owing to its additional mass.

Despite having the name Black Hole they can be lit up by gas that falls into the hole heating up and becoming an extreme form of X-ray.

The star that shredded apart as it got too close to the black hole today, let out violent bursts of bright ultraviolet X-rays as it was being destroyed and dragged into the abyss of the hole incredibly witnessed by scientific astronomers on Earth more than 3.9billion light years away.

And if you may be wondering if a black hole moves? Yes it moves as the Universe expands: “There is no such thing that is stationary in Space.”