Black holes keep tearing these stars apart, but they survive
Astrophysicists have discovered that the spin rate of a star before its first encounter with a black hole influences whether it survives subsequent tidal disruption events. This finding helps explain why some stars produce progressively fainter flares rather than consistent light bursts during repeated encounters.
Why it matters
This research provides a new model for understanding complex stellar interactions and black hole dynamics in distant galaxies.
Most galaxies are thought to harbor a supermassive black hole at their center. These enormous objects can weigh millions or even billions of times more than the sun, creating some of the strongest gravitational environments known in the universe.
When a star passes dangerously close to one of these black holes, destruction is not always immediate. Some stars survive the encounter and return for additional close passes, generating a fresh burst of light each time.
These events, known as repeating partial tidal disruption events (rpTDEs), allow astronomers to observe the same star interacting with the same black hole multiple times. Wide-field time-domain surveys make this possible by repeatedly scanning large regions of the sky and tracking objects whose brightness changes.
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