An international team of astronomers has recently observed a supermassive black hole tearing apart a star far from the center of its host galaxy — a first-of-its-kind discovery that challenges long-standing assumptions about black hole behavior and location.
The event, designated AT 2024tvd, occurred approximately 2,600 light-years from the galactic core.
Researchers say they have never before detected such intense radio emissions from a tidal disruption event (TDE) occurring outside a galaxy’s nucleus.
A TDE happens when a star drifts too close to a massive black hole and is ripped apart by its gravitational pull.
In this case, the black hole’s delayed release of energy — observed as two distinct radio bursts months apart — suggests a more complex process than previously understood.
The discovery was made using several of the world’s leading radio observatories, including the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager Large Array (AMI-LA) in the United Kingdom, and three U.S.-based facilities: the Allen Telescope Array, the Submillimeter Array, and the Very Large Array.
Astronomers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem led the observations with the AMI-LA telescope, which played a key role in tracking the rapid evolution of the radio signals.
“This delay shows that black holes can behave in surprisingly complex ways,” the researchers wrote in The Astrophysical Journal. “It’s evidence that even dormant black holes can reactivate under the right conditions.”
The team said the findings offer new insights into the hidden lives of black holes and may reshape theories about how they evolve and interact with their surroundings.