NASA Telescope Captures Wandering Black Hole Devouring Star

A wandering supermassive black hole weighing about a million times the mass of our Sun has been captured devouring a nearby star on the outer edge of a galaxy 760 million light-years away, according to NASA. The cosmic event, known scientifically as a tidal disruption event, was detected by the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory after researchers noticed a bright flare in the constellation Cetus.

How AI Helped Detect the Rare Tidal Disruption Event

The flare was initially spotted by the Zwicky Transient Facility, a survey conducted by the Palomar Observatory in Southern California that scans the night sky every two days. According to lead researcher Robert Stein, his team has utilized a new artificial intelligence tool called tdescore since 2024 to identify cosmic anomalies as they scan the sky every other night.

“Out of the half million flashes ZTF detects each night, our new artificial intelligence algorithm automatically recognized a flare that looked a lot like a tidal disruption event, despite its unusual location in the outskirts of a galaxy,” Stein told NASA. The flare was subsequently corroborated by several other telescopes before being confirmed by Swift’s instruments.

Tracking Invisible Supermassive Black Holes

Tidal disruption events occur when a star passes fatally close to a supermassive black hole, which shreds the star and absorbs its energy. The blue dot visible in telescope imagery represents the black hole’s accretion disk, where diffuse material from the star collects as it circles the singularity.

“We were looking for these star-shredding events as a way to find otherwise invisible supermassive black holes wandering away from the galactic cores where they usually reside,” Stein told NASA.

The History and Future of TDE Discoveries

While tidal disruption events were first predicted in the 1970s and first recorded in the 1990s, astronomers have observed a little over 100 TDEs in interstellar space so far. Researchers published their findings in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, validating a method that could help locate more wandering cosmic bodies.

“With this discovery, which is one of just a couple that have been confirmed so far, we’ve validated a new technique and can use it to hunt for more,” Stein said to NASA.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a tidal disruption event?

A tidal disruption event happens when a star passes too close to a supermassive black hole and is violently shredded and consumed by the black hole’s gravitational forces, according to NASA.

How far away was the black hole?

The wandering supermassive black hole is located on the outer edge of a galaxy approximately 760 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus.

How did researchers find this black hole?

Researchers used the Zwicky Transient Facility and an artificial intelligence tool called tdescore to spot the flare, which was later confirmed by the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory.