© DESY, Science Communication LabIllustration of a black hole shredding a star and releasing an energy jet.
The powerful 'Jetty McJetface' feature was discovered in one such system.
Scientists say a jet from a previously studied supermassive black hole has grown brighter, becoming one of the most energetic events in the universe.
The jet โ nicknamed "Jetty McJetface" โ is emanating from a black hole that was previously studied in 2022, after it picked up a star and began shredding it to pieces, releasing the jet in the process. Now, some four years later, that bout of "cosmic indigestion" is still going strong, researchers said.
"This is really unusual,"
Yvette Cendes, an astrophysicist at the University of Oregon who led the study published Feb. 5
in the Astrophysical Journal, said in a
statement. "I'd be hard-pressed to think of anything rising like this over such a long period of time."
Many such star-shredding events have been spotted before, when a star gets too close to the gravitational field to a black hole and is violently torn apart in
a process called "spaghettification." But such energy from spaghettification has never been seen before, Cendes said.
