Thread by @BadAstronomer

Astronomers have seen the aftermath of a star torn in half by a supermassive black hole.

The energy released was… quite large.

syfy.com/syfywire/astro…

I’m still having a hard time dealing with the energy of this event. Half the mass of that star was blasted away from the black hole at very nearly the speed of light.

And by “very nearly” I mean 99.5% of c. The energy that took is the about the same amount the Sun will emit OVER ITS ENTIRE LIFETIME.

This vast amount of energy was dumped into that gas in a matter of perhaps minutes, flinging it away from the black hole. And that motion was seen directly by radio telescopes.

The part that *really* gets me? This was a tiny fraction, maybe 1%, of the TOTAL energy of the event. TEN TIMES that amount of energy was pumped into just infrared and radio light. The flash must have been terrifyingly awesome.

Yet we saw almost nothing in optical light because of the tremendously thick dust surrounding that black hole.

Still. Good thing is was 140 million light years away.