Using data from two orbiting observatories, known as ROSAT and XMM-Newton, scientists have recently uncovered evidence that shows three stars being destroyed by black holes, an extremely rare event.
ROSAT was launched into space in 1990 and returned in 1999, when XMM-Newton took over. Using their combined 20 years of data scientists discovered the cases of stars being devoured by black holes.
Stars are thought to pass by a black hole once in 10,000 years. When a star passes into a black hole, it emits a bright flare; that is what scientists used to detect the destruction of these three stars. It is hard to detect X-ray flares that come from stars in black holes as opposed to other X-ray flares.
The researchers found new ways to identify flares that likely came from black holes. They started by excluding light that came from the periphery of the Milky Way galaxy, since the black hole in question is at the center of the galaxy. They used other methods as well, like tracking brightness over a period of a decade.
Eventually the team found three light flares which likely came from stars being absorbed by a black hole. They labeled the light emissions 1RXS J114727.1 + 494302, 1RXS J130547.2 + 641252 and 1RXS J235424.5-102053.
However, there is a good deal of uncertainty in the veracity of these findings, especially since there were only three isolated cases. They identified twelve other stars that might have died, but the research team is unsure. The team did not have much information to go on, so they cautioned that their results needed to be verified. The scientists hope to make improvements with the launch of a new orbiting space observatory, Spectrum-X-Gamma, in 2016. The new space observatory will have a soft-wavelength Russian-German designed telescope named eROSITA, and a hard-wavelength telescope, the Russian ART-XC.
The researchers are hoping that the new observatory's telescopes will pick up hundreds of cases each year of stars being consumed by black holes. This would give them great insight into the frequency of occurrences like this happening, and the way in which they happen. This information would be great to adding what we know about black holes.
We still do not know very much about black holes, and the ways in which they grow and consume energy. Tech Times reporter Jim Algar wrote in April about scientists at an observatory in Northwestern University eager to watch a supermassive black hole in a feeding frenzy, through an X-ray telescope.
