Every big galaxy, the Milky Way included, has a supermassive black hole lying smack dab in the middle of it. For the most part, these enormous objects are fairly dormant, with not a lot of observable activity going on. But once every 10,000 years or so, an unsuspecting star wanders too close to the supermassive black hole and gets sucked in by its tremendous gravitational pull.
This rare phenomenon, in which stars are torn apart and consumed by massive black holes, is called a tidal disruption event (TDE), and it's one of the most violent occurrences in the entire universe.
Only a couple of dozen tidal disruption events have been observed so far and none of them looks quite like the others. For example, as they gorge on a star, some supermassive black holes shoot out X-rays, while others emit mainly visible and ultraviolet light.
Until now, scientists have had a hard time accounting for this diversity, considering that all tidal disruption events are expected to be governed by the same laws of physics. But a new astrophysics model finally unveils what happens when a massive black hole devours a star, Science Daily reports.
The model, created by researchers at the University of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute and the University of California, Santa Cruz, uses concepts tied to general relativity, magnetic fields, radiation, and gas hydrodynamics to explain what astronomers can expect to see while observing a tidal disruption event.
