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  • Unusual gamma-ray flash may have come from star being eaten by massive black hole

    06/16/2011 2:38:08 PM PDT · by frithguild · 11 replies
    PHYSORG.com ^ | June 16, 2011 | University of California - Berkeley
    When the Swift Gamma Burst Mission spacecraft first detected the flash within the constellation Draco, astronomers thought it was a gamma-ray burst from a collapsing star. On March 31, however, UC Berkeley's Joshua Bloom sent out an email circular suggesting that it wasn't a typical gamma-ray burst at all, but a high-energy jet produced as a star about the size of our sun was shredded by a black hole a million times more massive. Careful analysis of the Swift data and subsequent observations by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory confirmed Bloom's initial insight. The details are...