News: Astronomers have discovered celestial events more powerful than gamma-ray bursts, known as extreme nuclear transients (ENTs).
About Extreme Nuclear Transients (ENTs)
- Extreme Nuclear Transients (ENTs) are the most powerful energy blasts known in the universe.
- These transients are objects whose brightness changes rapidly and are fueled by material from a massive star torn apart by a supermassive black hole.
- ENTs occur when supermassive black holes tear apart stars, releasing massive amounts of energy.
- ENTs can emit 100 times more energy in a single year than the Sun produces over its entire 10-billion-year lifetime
- ENTs are up to 10 times brighter than normal tidal disruption events (TDEs).
- They are much more powerful than gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), which were previously considered the most energetic events in the universe.
- ENTs travel across vast distances and stay bright in radio wavelengths for years.
- Formation
- They are believed to occur when a star gets too close to a supermassive black hole.
- The intense gravitational forces stretch and compress the star into a long, thin stream, releasing vast amounts of electromagnetic energy.
- This process is called a tidal disruption event (TDE) but at an extreme scale.
- ENTs are essentially extreme forms of TDEs of massive stars.
- ENTs are much rarer than TDEs, making them difficult to observe.
- Scientific Importance
- ENTs help astronomers study supermassive black holes in distant galaxies.
- Because of their brightness, ENTs can be seen across vast cosmic distances, making them powerful tools for probing the early universe.
- Observing ENTs provides insights into how black holes grew when the universe was half its current age, a time when galaxies were forming stars and feeding their black holes more actively.
