24 Black Holes Release Radio Waves in Unexplainable Burping Bouts Years After Ripping Stars

Black holes devour anything that comes close to them. However, researchers were baffled by their recent observation involving black holes.

Black Holes Burp Up The Remains of Stars They Devoured

Black holes that devour stars can "burp up" their stellar remnants years later in up to half of cases. After years of studying black holes engaged in tidal disruption events (TDEs), astronomers concluded that they "burp."

Stars that get too close to black holes get TDEs. The stars are stretched and compressed by the tremendous tidal pressures produced by these cosmic monsters, a process known as spaghettification. An intense flash of visible electromagnetic radiation is a warning before the unfortunate stars involved in TDEs are ripped apart or "unraveled" in hours.

While some of the stellar debris from the dead star is thrown away from the black hole, the remainder gathers into an accretion disk, a thin structure resembling a frisbee that gradually feeds that material to the black hole.

The accretion disk is unsteady in its early stages as matter swirls around and collides with itself, creating outflows that radio waves can detect. After the TDEs, astronomers often only observe these star-eating black holes briefly.

However, in a recent study, astronomers observed TDE-related black holes for hundreds of days and discovered that, in up to 50% of the cases, the black holes "burped back" star matter years after the TDE.

According to study lead author Yvette Cendes, a research associate at the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a significant fraction of these black holes that don't have radio emission at these early stages would abruptly "switch on" in radio waves.

She referred to the incident as a "burp" because a delay prevents the material from leaving the accretion disk until much later than expected.

She noted that 10 of the 24 black holes reemitted this material between two and six years following the star-destroying events.

Cendes and her colleagues are unsure of what causes black holes to "switch on" after a long period of inactivity, but whatever it is is undoubtedly external to the black holes.

What Is a Black Hole?

A black hole is a location where the gravitational pull is so strong that even light cannot escape. The gravity is extremely intense because the substance is compressed into a small area. When a star is dying, this may take place.

People cannot perceive black holes because no light can escape from them. They are undetectable. Specialized space telescopes can aid in the discovery of black holes. The unique instruments can observe how stars that are very near black holes behave differently from other stars.

Black holes can be either large or small. The smallest black holes, according to scientists, are as small as a single atom. Despite their size, these tiny black holes have the bulk of a massive mountain. Mass is the amount of how much matter, or "stuff," an object contains.

The mass of a "stellar" black hole, which is a different type, may be up to 20 times greater than the mass of the sun. In the Milky Way, the Earth's galaxy, there could be many star mass black holes.

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