Astronomers photographed the violent interaction in which a black hole "spaghettified" a star into the shape of a doughnut

 By Ben Turner

January 14, 2023

The black hole created the ideal doughnut-shaped of doom by wrapping the layers of the torn star around itself.

                             A star is being drained of its material and stretched into the shape of a doughnut by a black hole, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Located 300 million light-years from Earth in the centre of the galaxy ESO 583-G004, the supermassive black hole snared and destroyed the star when it strayed too near, emitting a powerful ultraviolet light that scientists used to pinpoint the catastrophic encounter.

The unhappy star is subjected to enormous tidal pressures as a result of a black hole's feeding activity. The gravity acting on the parts of the star closest to the black hole is significantly stronger than that acting on the star's farside as the star is drawn ever-closer to the black hole's mouth. Due to this discrepancy, the star becomes "spaghettified," turning it into a long, string-like structure that is tightly twisted around the black hole layer by layer, much like spaghetti around a fork.

This doughnut-shaped mass of hot plasma rapidly accelerates around the black hole before spinning out into a massive jet of energy and matter. This bright flash is visible to optical, X-ray, and radio-wave telescopes.

Astronomers were able to observe this specific black hole feeding session for a longer amount of time than is common for tidal disruption events due to its remarkable brightness. According to the experts, this might provide fascinating new insights on the unlucky star's dying moments.

According to a NASA release, astronomer Peter Maksym of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, "We're searching someplace on the border of that doughnut" (opens in new tab). We are witnessing a stellar wind being projected at us at a speed of 20 million miles per hour across the surface of the black hole (three percent the speed of light). We're still trying to process the incident, in all honesty.

Spaghettification is a dramatic process for a celebrity. The star's outer atmosphere layers are removed first. Then, they wrap around the black hole to create the compact yarn ball seen by the researchers. Soon after, the rest of the star accelerates around the black hole. Despite black holes' reputation as ravenous eaters, the majority of the star's substance will escape; according to a recent story from Live Science, just 1% of a normal star is ever consumed by a black hole.

The findings were presented during the American Astronomical Society's 241st conference, which took place this week in Seattle.