Astronomers have witnessed an extraordinary cosmic catastrophe: a black hole tearing apart a massive star and devouring it piece by piece.
The dramatic event, nicknamed the “Whippet,” was announced at the American Astronomical Society’s annual meeting in January and ranks among the most powerful explosions ever observed in the universe.
The event occurred when a black hole encountered a huge companion star—far larger and more massive than our Sun.
The black hole’s intense gravity ripped the star apart, stretching and shredding it into a swirling disk of gas. As the material spiraled inward, it heated up and released an enormous burst of energy.
At its peak, the explosion briefly shone with about 400 billion times the energy output of the Sun, surpassing even the brightest known supernovae.
“This was like watching a black hole prepare a snack,” said Daniel Perley, an associate professor of astrophysics at Liverpool John Moores University and lead author of the study, which will appear in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
“We think we’re seeing a black hole shredding a massive star and feeding on the debris. It’s rare and awe-inspiring.”
Astronomers around the world spotted the event almost as soon as its light reached Earth. Anna Ho of Cornell University first detected it using the Zwicky Transient Facility in California, which scans the sky for sudden flashes of light.
The object, officially named AT2024wpp, quickly showed signs of being a Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient, or LFBOT—a mysterious and uncommon type of stellar explosion.
Follow-up observations from ground-based telescopes and NASA’s Swift satellite confirmed the clues. The event was unusually blue, extremely hot, and produced strong X-ray emissions. Measurements of its distance revealed that it was far too energetic to be a normal supernova, pointing instead to a star being torn apart by a black hole in what astronomers call a tidal disruption event.
As the black hole fed on the star’s remains, it launched a powerful shock wave that blasted outward at about one-fifth the speed of light. This shock plowed into dense gas surrounding the system, creating bright light across the optical, ultraviolet, and radio parts of the spectrum. After about six months, the shock suddenly faded when it reached the edge of a bubble formed by gas the star had shed before its final destruction.
Despite the wealth of data, the Whippet still holds surprises. Early observations showed almost no chemical fingerprints, but later on, faint signals of hydrogen and helium appeared. Even more puzzling, the helium was racing toward Earth at more than 6,000 kilometers per second. Scientists suspect this material may come from a narrow stream of stellar debris that survived the initial shredding—or possibly from another nearby object blasted by the black hole’s fierce radiation.
Events like the Whippet give astronomers a rare chance to study how black holes grow and how extreme gravity shapes the universe. As Perley noted, they are not just spectacular fireworks, but powerful tools for understanding where black holes are and how they evolve over cosmic time.
Source: KSR.
