We live in black holes for the past year, which is quite full. In April, NASA presented us with the first photo of a black hole. NASA also shared the images of what the black holes, which existentially scary, can now do to the stars. This week, NASA announced that Transping Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) was able to detect what was called tidal distortion. In Layman’s words, when a star gets too close to a black hole, it stops acting like a star and drifts into the black hole. When the star is sufficiently close to the black hole, it becomes vertically stuck as it spans vertically due to the tidal effect, known as “spaghettification”, and looks like a spaghetti.
The special black hole that attracts this star is about 375 million light years away in the sleek galaxy 2MASX J07001137-6602251. NASA estimates that this black hole weighs six million times the mass of the sun. Although this is rare, a tidal deterioration is not the first time. The event that astronomers can observe from beginning to end takes place in the Milky Way galaxy only between 10,000 and 100,000 years. NASA, so far, reported close to 40 tidal distortion.
The direct observation of a black hole is remarkable, because black holes cannot be physically seen by nature. However, the effects of black holes on things around them can be observed. The first photo of the black hole in April was actually a photo of a gas gathered around a black hole.
