Astronomers propose a new explanation for “Bright Blue Outbursts”
Among the number of quick transient events discovered by the new automated survey telescopes on the ground and in space that have been built in the past two decades are something astronomers have labeled “bright blue outbursts”, bright flashes of blue and ultraviolet light that appear quickly and then fade away, leaving behind X-ray and radio emissions.
There are several theories as to what causes these flashes, but none are accepted whole-heartedly. Now a team of astronomers have looked at one flash and proposed a new theory.
This curious class of objects is known as luminous fast blue optical transients (LFBOTs), and with slightly more than a dozen discovered so far, astronomers have debated whether they are produced by an unusual type of supernova or by interstellar gas falling into a black hole.
Analysis of the brightest LFBOT to-date, named AT 2024wpp and discovered last year, shows that they’re neither. Instead, a team led by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, concluded that they are caused by an extreme tidal disruption, where a black hole of up to 100 times the mass of our Sun completely shreds its massive star companion within days.
… “The sheer amount of radiated energy from these bursts is so large that you can’t power them with a core collapse stellar explosion — or any other type of normal stellar explosion,” says Natalie LeBaron, UC Berkeley graduate student and first author on the paper presenting the Gemini data [1]. “The main message from AT 2024wpp is that the model that we started off with is wrong. It’s definitely not just an exploding star.”
The researchers hypothesize that the intense, high-energy light emitted during this extreme tidal disruption was a consequence of the long parasitic history of the black hole binary system. As they reconstruct this history, the black hole had been sucking material from its companion for a long time, completely enshrouding itself in a halo of material too far from the black hole for it to swallow.
Need I mention that this theory, while better explaining the data, remains unconfirmed and decidedly uncertain.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Among the number of quick transient events discovered by the new automated survey telescopes on the ground and in space that have been built in the past two decades are something astronomers have labeled “bright blue outbursts”, bright flashes of blue and ultraviolet light that appear quickly and then fade away, leaving behind X-ray and radio emissions.
There are several theories as to what causes these flashes, but none are accepted whole-heartedly. Now a team of astronomers have looked at one flash and proposed a new theory.
This curious class of objects is known as luminous fast blue optical transients (LFBOTs), and with slightly more than a dozen discovered so far, astronomers have debated whether they are produced by an unusual type of supernova or by interstellar gas falling into a black hole.
Analysis of the brightest LFBOT to-date, named AT 2024wpp and discovered last year, shows that they’re neither. Instead, a team led by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, concluded that they are caused by an extreme tidal disruption, where a black hole of up to 100 times the mass of our Sun completely shreds its massive star companion within days.
… “The sheer amount of radiated energy from these bursts is so large that you can’t power them with a core collapse stellar explosion — or any other type of normal stellar explosion,” says Natalie LeBaron, UC Berkeley graduate student and first author on the paper presenting the Gemini data [1]. “The main message from AT 2024wpp is that the model that we started off with is wrong. It’s definitely not just an exploding star.”
The researchers hypothesize that the intense, high-energy light emitted during this extreme tidal disruption was a consequence of the long parasitic history of the black hole binary system. As they reconstruct this history, the black hole had been sucking material from its companion for a long time, completely enshrouding itself in a halo of material too far from the black hole for it to swallow.
Need I mention that this theory, while better explaining the data, remains unconfirmed and decidedly uncertain.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
” . . . the model that we started off with is wrong.”
The Uncertainty of Science™. Applies to the hard and soft sciences. A very expensive direction of resources, because some people can’t admit that.
Blair Ivy, so true.
I often talk to educated people about their Science beliefs and point out the inconsistencies and how if they do the scientific method, prove their beliefs to be wrong.
“Not the way I was taught” is often the response indicating that their belief is religious in nature and not science. I’m often branded as a heretic for pointing out what should be obvious to everyone.
My first thoughts on this article is that it would indeed take the mass of a star being converted into energy to see from a great distance, a blue flash with such intensity, radiated in a spherical fashion… enough energy to irradiate the galaxy from which is from lifeless.
Personally I do not think they take into consideration that a black hole would form a wormhole with any passing star. Like a frog who’s tongue flicks out and grabs a fly.
A black hole would suck a nearby star dry through the wormhole occurring in the same “timeframe” as the black hole, which is essentially taking forever because time has nearly stopped. in other words, no bright flash because of the time constraints metering out the energy slowly at a lower wavelength… This also keeps the energy blast from sterilizing the galaxy from where the absorption occurs.
A collision of a black hole and a star, on the other hand, would result in the mass of the star collecting on the transition zone event horizon unable to merge because of time constraints, but unable to resist the gravitational pull. The stars mass would surround and cover the event horizon and appear as a quasar until it’s mass can slowly be consumed.
So what would be my hypothesis on the blue flash?
A magnetar/neutron star would have tightly focused jets from their poles. Like a Mazer beam that creates x-rays and the blue flash along its path of travel, even to distant galaxies. The likelihood that you would encounter a tightly focused beam like this is very slight, and very rare. Considering how many stars in the universe, the occurrence happens but cannot be predicted.
Here’s an example.
https://www.nasa.gov/universe/stars/neutron-stars/magnetars/a-star-that-bursts-blinks-and-disappears/