Crossing 500 million light-years, a signal in the form of an X-ray burst has “bombarded” Earth’s telescopes.
According to SciTech Daily, this ultra-powerful signal was detected by the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, a NASA space telescope shaped like a swift bird.
The signal is incredibly unusual: Instead of fading away as expected, it shines brilliantly for 7 to 10 days before fading out, then brightening again and fading out once more. This pattern repeats every 25 days.
However, it is not a message from extraterrestrials.
The doomed star and the monstrous black hole – (Graphic from SCITECH DAILY)
Tracing the signal, a team of scientists led by Dr. Phil Evans from the University of Leicester’s Department of Physics and Astronomy identified the unusual signal comes from 2MASX J02301709+2836050, a galaxy located 500 million light-years from Earth.
And it is a signal from the realm of the dead: The final scream of a giant star being gradually “torn apart.”
Using astronomical models, the authors concluded that the X-ray source – named Swift J0230 represents a star similar in size to the Sun, orbiting in an elliptical path around the central black hole of the galaxy.
Each time it enters the narrow part of its orbit, where the star comes too close to the black hole, it is gradually “torn apart” by this “monster.”
Measurements show that in each “bite,” the black hole consumes a massive amount of material, three times the mass of our planet.
This black hole itself has a mass of about 10,000 to 100,000 solar masses, which, while still classified as a “monster” black hole (i.e., a supermassive black hole), is among the smallest in the realm of central galactic black holes.
For comparison, Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, has a mass equivalent to 4 million suns.
