After observing black holes participating in tidal disruption events (TDEs) for a considerable amount of time, astronomers came up with an astounding finding. It would appear that as many as fifty percent of the black holes that consume stars will, years later, “burp up” the remains of the stars they consumed. Part of the stellar debris of the killed star is ejected out from the black hole. At the same time, the remainder forms an accretion disk, resulting in a thin structure that resembles a frisbee and progressively feeds that material into the black hole. To say the least, that is really fascinating to consider.
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If you look years later, a very, very large fraction of these black holes that don’t have radio emission at these early times will actually suddenly ‘turn on’ in radio waves. I call it a ‘burp’ because we’re having some sort of delay where this material is not coming out of the accretion disk until much later than people were anticipating, explained Yvette Cendes, a research associate at the Havard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and study lead author.
In the latest study, astronomers observed black holes that were engaged in TDEs for hundreds of days, and they discovered that in up to fifty percent of the instances, the black holes “burped back” star matter years after the TDE. That’s very remarkable, don’t you think?
The computer models that replicate TDEs, which normally come to an end a few weeks after the demise of the star, are the source of at least some of the mystery. According to the findings of the most recent study, the models need to be revised in order to account for certain unexpected behaviors shown by black holes. The crew will continue to keep an eye on all of the black holes that are responsible for the TDE, especially considering that some of them are continuing to shine more brightly.
