In June last year, astronomers witnessed an incredibly bright cosmic burst, which is considered the most powerful supernova observed to date. The explosion was so powerful that at its peak it was 20 times the light output of the entire Milky Way.
However, recent studies have led scientists to doubt that this event, designated ASASSN-15lh, was in fact a supernova explosion. According to scientists, this may be a truly unique cosmic phenomenon – the ‘agony’ of a star that came too close to a supermassive black hole and was literally torn apart by its gravitational influence.
“We observed this light source for 10 months after this event and concluded that its description could hardly be left in the framework of the observation of an unusually bright supernova,” said astrophysicist Yorgos Leoudasiz of the Weizmann Institute in Israel, the author of the new study. ‘Our observations indicate that the event was caused by the impact of a rapidly rotating supermassive black hole, which led to the destruction of the massive star.’
According to the new theory, a supermassive black hole is located 4 billion light-years from Earth, and it was in this region that the ASASSN-15lh event occurred, which marked the entry of a star into this black hole. If this hypothesis turns out to be correct, and it really happened, then astronomers will be able to claim that for the first time they observed such a powerful light source as the result of a star being pulled into a black hole.
