A singularly intense beam of light was spotted shining from the centre of a distant galaxy on 28 March after a massive black hole ripped a star apart, astronomers say.
The beam, detected by NASA's Swift satellite, lasted for more than two weeks, much longer than any known gamma-ray burst — explosions associated with supernovae that decline in minutes. According to a team led by Andrew Levan of the University of Warwick in Coventry, UK, the blast of light was also around 100 times brighter than light emitted by massive black holes lurking at the centre of galaxies, which are powered as they lap up nearby gas.
So what was it? A second team, led by Joshua Bloom at the University of California, Berkeley, suggests the engine was still a huge black hole, with the mass of at least one million Suns. But the fuel may have been a single star that strayed too close (artist's impression pictured).
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Blaze marks star's violent death. Nature 474, 422 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/474422c
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/474422c
