Watch This Black Hole Devour a Star Just Like Our Sun, One Nibble at a Time

WASHINGTON, Sept 8 - Guess what? Black holes, those cosmic giants known for their insatiable appetites, don't always devour stars in one huge bite. Some prefer to nibble!

Exciting news from the scientific community reveals a supermassive black hole in a neighboring galaxy, savoring its meal by taking little bites out of a star quite like our sun. Every time this star swings close to the black hole during its elongated orbit, it loses material about three times the size of Earth!

Let's break this down: Black holes are cosmic powerhouses so dense that they trap everything, even light.

This intriguing star caught in the black hole's dance is a whopping 520 million light years away. For context, a light year is a staggering 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). This particular show is taking place in a spiral galaxy, with the star being slowly but steadily consumed by the heart of that galaxy: a relatively pint-sized supermassive black hole.

When we talk "pint-sized," this black hole is only a few hundred thousand times the size of our sun. Just for comparison, the star of our own Milky Way, the black hole Sagittarius A*, boasts a size around 4 million times that of the sun. And there are other galaxies with black holes that make ours look tiny, with masses hundreds of millions times that of the sun.

The lively scenes around these galactic giants are often some of the most dramatic cosmic theaters in the universe.

The scientists used precious data mainly from NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory in space to uncover this stellar dance.

Here's the fascinating part: the star orbits this black hole roughly every 20-30 days. When it gets closer on one end of its orbit, the black hole playfully sips away some material from its atmosphere - without completely devouring the star! This phenomenon is termed a "repeating partial tidal disruption."

As the star's material spirals into the black hole, it reaches a fiery 3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit (2 million degrees Celsius), emitting a brilliant burst of X-rays. Thankfully, our space observatory caught this mesmerizing display.

Astrophysicist Rob Eyles-Ferris of the University of Leicester, a contributor to this groundbreaking study, shared that over time, the star's dance will lead it ever closer to its cosmic partner until, eventually, it'll be completely consumed. But, this thrilling celestial ballet is expected to last anywhere from years to possibly even centuries.

In an exhilarating turn of events, this is the debut observation of a sun-like star being savored in small bites by a supermassive black hole.

Eyles-Ferris voiced the excitement in the scientific community: "There's so much we don't know about tidal disruption events and how a star's orbit impacts them. The field is buzzing right now! We're on the edge of our seats, waiting for the next big discovery."

Source : Reuters (Reporting by Will Dunham)