Artist’s illustration of a tidal collapse event: a star destroyed by the gravity of a supermassive black hole. © ESO, ESA / Hubble, M. Cornmesser
“Killer” is the correct way to pronounce the name, originally for sky surveys supernovae, these catastrophic explosions of stars. So we can say that there are sometimes well-thought-out acronyms, like ASASSN-22ci (for All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernova), because it really is cosmic murder.
One of the two flashes was observed, especially in X-rays, indicating an ocean breakup event. © Jason T. Coudre (Nasa) et al, arXiv, 2024
The ASASSN automated survey therefore recently recorded (well, in February 2022…) and not too far from us (well, “only” 400 million light years away…) two flashes of light that were not supernovae. , but two occurrences per tidal interval, or Sea incident French physicist Jean-Pierre Luminet, who specializes in black holes in English, along with his colleague Brandon Carter, gave the phenomenon a well-named name. “Stellar Crepe Flambé”.
What is the “Stellar Crepe Flambée” or Sea Break Event?
Curiosity is not a bad mistake, unless the object is a black hole and you are a star orbiting it, say at the center of the galaxy. So, if your scientific curiosity leads you to get close enough to a supermassive black hole, it will enter a zone called the accretionary sphere, corresponding to the area around the black hole where its gravity exerts its influence. Severe enough to disfigure you, you are at risk. A breakup in the form of a stellar crepe flambe! For a small black hole, the effect is so intense that it leads to spaghettification (see box below)!
20 years of observing the motions of stars passing close to the Milky Way’s central black hole. © ESO / and
In the animation above, we can see the stars moving around the black hole Sagittarius A* at the center of the Milky Way. Here, none of the stars show the characteristic brightness of tidal bursts, although some come very close to the black hole, reaching insane speeds of several percent of the speed of light. No doubt this extreme speed allows them to be less distorted by gravity.
Star fragments take temperatures in excess of 30,000°C.
The study’s astronomer-authors, led by NASA’s Jason T. Coudrey, observed over a 720-day period. flare upthat is, a very energetic and hot flash of light, at about 30,000 K, five times the temperature of the Sun’s surface. Since the star hasn’t completely disintegrated, they’re planning another event around February 4, 2026: so we can save the date on our calendars, because it’s clear the star has its next kill. There is no way to avoid it.
This video describes the incident well:
