Black Holes, Flares, And Pancakes

After our discussions the last two days in class, this article on black holes and flares (see below) is interesting. This observation from apr. 21 led to a couple interesting articles about stars that orbit too close to black holes becoming flat like pancakes (click here or here for more about that). I think we were just starting to touch on this kind of thing at the end of class on Wednesday.

X-Ray Flare Echo Reveals Supermassive Black Hole Torus

Written by Ian O'Neill

The light echo of an X-ray flare from the nucleus of a galaxy has been observed. The flare almost certainly originates from a single star being gravitationally ripped apart by a supermassive black hole in the galactic core. As the star was being pulled into the black hole, its material was injected into the black hole accretion disk, causing a sudden burst of radiation. The resulting X-ray flare emission was observed as it hit local stellar gases, producing the light echo. This event gives us a better insight to how stars are eaten by supermassive black holes and provides a method to map the structure of galactic nuclei. Scientists now believe they have observational evidence for the elusive molecular torus that is thought to surround active supermassive black holes.... click here for full article