NASA Spots Black Holes Eating Stars To Create Biggest Boom Since Big Bang

Jason Hinkle, a graduate student at the University of Hawaii and lead author of the study explains that "these events are the only way we can have a spotlight that we can shine on otherwise inactive massive black holes." He notes that the destruction of these massive stars unleashes enormous amounts of high-energy radiation, significantly impacting the central regions of their host galaxies.

The discovery of ENTs began with Hinkle and his team's meticulous search through public transient surveys for long-lived flares emanating from galactic centers. Two particularly anomalous flares captured by ESA's Gaia mission in 2016 and 2018, along with a third detected by the Zwicky Transient Facility in 2020, hinted at something unique. Further analysis, including critical observations from NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, confirmed that these events were not stellar explosions but rather the unmistakable sign of black holes ripping stars apart.

The most powerful ENT documented, Gaia18cdj, unleashed an astonishing 25 times more energy than the most energetic known supernovae. To put this into perspective, a standard supernova releases as much energy in a year as our Sun will in its entire 10 billion-year lifespan. ENTs, however, can radiate the energy of 100 Suns in a single year.