Supermassive Black Hole Shreds a Star, and You Get to Watch

in Astronomy | May 3rd, 2012 3 Comments

Imag­ine a star (like our sun) wan­der­ing close to a super­mas­sive black hole and find­ing itself mer­ci­less­ly ripped apart by this beast weigh­ing mil­lions to bil­lions times more than the hap­less star. It does­n’t hap­pen very often. But when it hap­pens, it’s pret­ty spec­tac­u­lar. And now NASA has pro­duced a com­put­er sim­u­la­tion show­ing this spec­ta­cle, draw­ing on evi­dence gath­ered by NASA’s Galaxy Evo­lu­tion Explor­er and the Pan-STARRS1 tele­scope locat­ed in Hawaii. Here’s how NASA describes what you’re see­ing in the clip above:

Some of the stel­lar debris falls into the black hole and some of it is eject­ed into space at high speeds. The areas in white are regions of high­est den­si­ty, with pro­gres­sive­ly red­der col­ors cor­re­spond­ing to low­er-den­si­ty regions. The blue dot pin­points the black hole’s loca­tion. The elapsed time cor­re­sponds to the amount of time it takes for a Sun-like star to be ripped apart by a black hole a mil­lion times more mas­sive than the Sun.

NASA has more infor­ma­tion on this stel­lar homi­cide here.

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Comments (3)
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  • Jamie says:
    May 3, 2012 at 7:29 am

    Think the title of this post should prob­a­bly hint that this is a com­put­er sim­u­la­tion… ;P

    Reply
  • s-infotech.com says:
    May 7, 2012 at 12:49 am

    thanks for give me Essen­tials course.“http://s‑infotech.com/about-computer-courses-datails.html” title=“about com­put­er courses”>about com­put­er cours­esy­ou want oth­er com­put­er course so vis­it s‑infotech.com.

    Reply
  • Isis2012 says:
    August 6, 2012 at 4:13 am

    I con­sid­er this to be a supe­ri­or advance tech­nol­o­gy at work on the inside of a hol­low and mechan­i­cal­ly oper­at­ing Black Sphere referred to as a Novice Sphere … and the inhal­ing of a made-ready ball of illu­mi­nat­ed plas­ma gasses, as to fuel the inner dielec­tric sphere’s con­tained field of accel­er­at­ed plas­ma under cold fusion  .. such an Exot­ic Sphere would be the very grav­i­ta­tion force sus­tain­ing the mak­ing of a galaxy’s mul­ti-dimen­sion­al foun­da­tion  … a foun­da­tion where may worlds will roost their exis­tence .. 

    Reply

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