Stars Survive Despite Black Holes' Repeated Attacks
Astrophysicists have discovered that the rotation speed of a star before it encounters a black hole determines whether it survives multiple partial tidal disruption events. This finding explains why some stars appear to fade rather than brighten during repeated close passes to supermassive black holes.
Why it matters
It solves a long-standing mystery in astrophysics regarding stellar behavior in extreme gravitational environments.
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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