Astrophysicists have found three possible occasions of the total destruction of stars by supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies.
The researchers analyzed two decades-worth of X-ray data obtained from orbiting observatories ROSAT and XMM-Newton.
A star is destroyed by the central supermassive black hole once every 10,000 years or so for any given galaxy, according to Discovery News. Most known galaxies are believed to contain at least one supermassive black hole in their cores, which has a big effect on galactic and stellar evolution.
When a star drifts too close to a supermassive black hole, intense tidal stresses rip the star to shreds.
If this happens, the shredded material is then dragged into the black hole's accretion disk, a hot disk of gas that is pulled into the black hole's event horizon. This bulks up the black hole's mass, or blasted as energetic jets from its poles.
Powerful X-rays of a specific signature will be generated if there is a rapid injection of material, according to Discovery News.
For a new study, which was published by the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, astrophysicists searched through observations from two space observatories to find three likely occasions where stars have been eaten by supermassive black holes.
Their work was accepted for publication in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
"Using data from the German ROSAT and European XMM-Newton space observatories, X-ray data from 1990 (to today) could be accessed and three events in different galaxies were positively identified - designated 1RXS J114727.1 + 494302, 1RXS J130547.2 + 641252 and 1RXS J235424.5-102053," Discovery News reported.
At least two dozen other stellar death event candidates were found during observations but positive indications won't be available until the Spectrum-X-Gamma space observatory is launched in 2016.
Their work has added important detail to these rare events, indicating that one star every 30,000 years in any given galaxy will be destroyed by the central supermassive black hole. The researchers did mention that more observations of stars being eaten by supermassive black holes are needed however.
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