© Dana Berry/SkyWorks DigitalCosmic explosions called gamma-ray bursts may be the result of black holes burrowing into stars and devouring them from the inside
The flashes are known as gamma-ray bursts because most of their energy is in the form of high-energy radiation, including gamma rays and X-rays. The longer flashes, lasting at least a few seconds, have long been thought to signal the deaths of massive stars that have run out of fuel, causing them to collapse to form black holes, unleashing powerful jets of radiation in the process.
Now an alternative explanation has been given new lease of life: a black hole may instead be an external attacker that dives into the belly of a massive star and consumes it.
Although both scenarios involve a black hole, an invader might take more time to finish gobbling up the star's matter, releasing radiation for longer. Calculations by Maxim Barkov at the University of Leeds, UK, and Serguei Komissarov of the Space Research Institute in Moscow, Russia, show this could account for lingering X-ray emissions seen several minutes after some gamma-ray bursts begin, which have proved hard to explain.
"Where this model really shines is explaining the late emission," says Chris Fryer of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico - one of the physicists who first proposed the burrowing black hole theory in the 1990s. It remains to be seen if it can account for the extreme brightness seen at the beginning of gamma-ray bursts, he says.
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