Under the immense gravitational pull of a black hole, a star undergoes a process known as “spaghettification,” being stretched and torn apart before being consumed.
Known as the “monsters of the universe,” black holes are one of the greatest mysteries in humanity’s exploration of space. Most black holes are incredibly vast, with gravitational forces strong enough that not even light can escape.
This phenomenon is called “spaghettification”. (Image: ESO).
As a result, they are difficult to detect, silently influencing the orbits of planets with their gravitational force, waiting for the opportunity to devour any matter in their path. Recently, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured a terrifying scene: a black hole “devouring” a star in space.
“Events like this are very hard to observe; we usually only capture the initial part of the process when there’s a lot of light. This time, we were able to observe it very early and capture the entire process,” said researcher Peter Maksym from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.
Images from NASA show that the star, as it passed by the black hole, was pulled in by gravitational forces, becoming distorted and stretched into a long streak of light. This phenomenon is known as “spaghettification,” causing objects to be elongated and compressed into thin, long shapes.
In this case, after the star observed by Hubble was torn apart, debris formed from the intense pull of the black hole. These fragments were drawn in as elongated streaks, creating a torus of material similar to a donut, swirling chaotically around the black hole. Subsequently, the black hole would consume all this material, releasing a massive burst of light and radiation.
The process of the black hole “devouring” the star. (Image: NASA).
“The images captured show the moment before the donut-shaped material disappears. We observed winds from the black hole sweeping across the surface at a speed of 20 million miles per hour,” Maksym noted.
According to scientists, this is a spectacular phenomenon in the universe, as black holes “devouring” stars, as recorded by the Hubble Telescope, typically occurs only once every 100,000 years.
In reality, the event of a black hole consuming a star does not happen in real-time. This phenomenon took place 300 million light-years away from Earth, meaning the black hole “ate” the star 300 million years ago.
However, only now is the light reaching Earth, allowing NASA scientists to witness and record it. Nevertheless, the images captured by Hubble of the entire process of the “black hole feast” provide a golden opportunity for astronomers to observe black holes, which are typically dark and invisible, as reported by Cnet.
Launched into orbit in 1990, Hubble was once the most powerful space telescope in the world. The Hubble Telescope can observe ultraviolet rays and visible light with remarkable clarity. Over more than 30 years of observation, the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed that every galaxy always contains a black hole at its center, and its size is proportional to that of the galaxy.
The first published image of a black hole. (Image: NASA).
Black holes tend to form when a large star dies and are often referred to as the graveyard of matter, as nothing can escape them, not even light. The fate of anyone falling into a black hole is truly catastrophic. Under the tremendous gravitational pull of the black hole, their body would undergo the process of “spaghettification,” tearing apart every part, bone, and even atoms.
“There are still very few black hole star-eating phenomena recorded by ultraviolet rays as they provide a wealth of new information. Therefore, we are thrilled to have received so much data related to black holes from the recorded event,” said scientist Emily Engelthaler from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.
This event is scientifically coded as AT2022dsb, recorded on March 1, 2022, by observatories in the All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS) network. The event has attracted considerable attention from the astronomical community.
