Title: Astronomers Discover Unprecedented Burst of Brightness from Supermassive Black Hole
Subtitle: Observations Challenge Existing Knowledge of Black Hole Behavior
Date: July 5, 2023
In a groundbreaking discovery, a team of astronomers led by Dr. Samantha Oates from the University of Birmingham has observed one of the most powerful transient events ever recorded in the universe. The event, named J221951, involved a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy, which dramatically “switched on,” altering its brightness over a short period of time. The findings were recently presented at the 2023 National Astronomy Meeting in Cardiff and published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The team, consisting of researchers from the University of Birmingham, University College London, Queen’s University Belfast, and the European Southern Observatory (ESO), made use of various instruments such as NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope, as well as ground-based telescopes like the South African Large Telescope.
The remarkable discovery was made while the team was searching for the source of a gravitational wave (GW) event detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Advanced Virgo detector in April 2019. J221951, being approximately 10 billion light-years away, turned out to be unrelated to the GW event, which was detected less than 0.5 billion light-years away.
Contrary to expectations, J221951 did not display the typical blue burst and rapid fading characteristics of kilonovae events. Instead, the black hole’s brightness remained constant, prompting the team to further investigate the mysterious occurrence. The obtained spectra from the Hubble Space Telescope’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and other instruments revealed that the transient was the result of a supermassive black hole suddenly and rapidly consuming surrounding material.
Dr. Matt Nicholl from Queen’s University Belfast highlighted the significance of this discovery in expanding our understanding of supermassive black hole behavior. He explained that the intense bursts of energy released during such feeding events disrupt star formation within a galaxy, shaping its central region and disk.
The team proposed two possible explanations for this unexpected feeding behavior. One possibility is a tidal disruption event, where an orbiting star passes too close to the black hole and is torn apart. The other possibility is that J221951 is an active galactic nucleus (AGN), also known as a quasar, which began feeding on its accretion disk after being dormant previously.
Future investigations using next-generation telescopes will provide additional insights into J221951. Dr. Oates expressed the team’s plans to closely monitor the behavior of the black hole over the coming months to understand whether it follows the fading pattern of a tidal disruption event or the resurgence characteristics of an AGN.
This groundbreaking discovery highlights the active role that supermassive black holes play in shaping galaxies and opens up new avenues of research in the field of astrophysics. With the advancements in observational capabilities, astronomers are poised to uncover more hidden secrets of the universe and further our understanding of these enigmatic cosmic phenomena.
[Image Source: Elizabeth Wheatley (STScI)]