Meet 'Scary Barbie,' a black hole slaughtering a star in the brightest way possible
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Loading... - Lina Zhukov
- 28 Apr 2023
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'Scary Barbie' is an incredibly bright cosmic object that has been burning for two years, and it has yet to sputter out.
Astronomers have detected one of the longest, brightest and most energetic cosmic objects ever observed — and they've named it "Scary Barbie," in part due to its terrifying power. The remote object, an astonishingly bright flash of light that has lasted for more than two years, was discovered lurking inside an enormous data set gathered by computer-guided telescopes.
After finding the brightly burning patch of sky in the data and cross-referencing it with observations made by other telescopes, the astronomers realized they had stumbled across one of the most powerful cosmic explosions ever witnessed. They reported their findings April 17 on the preprint server arXiv(opens in new tab), and their paper has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
"It's absurd. If you take a typical supernova and multiply it a thousand times, we're still not at how bright this is — and supernovas are among the most luminous objects in the sky," co-author Danny Milisavljevic(opens in new tab), an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Purdue University, said in a statement(opens in new tab). "This is the most energetic phenomenon I have ever encountered." Scary Barbie was born from the final death throes of a star being torn to shreds by a supermassive black hole. Read More…
