1 00:00:01,920 --> 00:00:07,240 Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, 2 00:00:07,320 --> 00:00:10,879 Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel, bam here. If you get into a fight 3 00:00:10,920 --> 00:00:13,520 Speaker 1: with a black hole, the black hole is going to win. 4 00:00:13,960 --> 00:00:17,599 Speaker 1: That's one of the universe's constants. Black Holes have such 5 00:00:17,640 --> 00:00:22,320 Speaker 1: immense gravitational polls that they can swallow stars hole. Except 6 00:00:22,640 --> 00:00:26,320 Speaker 1: one lucky star has managed to escape a black hole's destruction, 7 00:00:26,560 --> 00:00:30,840 Speaker 1: or at least immediate destruction. A report from the March 8 00:00:30,920 --> 00:00:34,600 Speaker 1: issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 9 00:00:34,640 --> 00:00:38,120 Speaker 1: detailed how this red giant star, located in a galaxy 10 00:00:38,159 --> 00:00:40,720 Speaker 1: about two hundred and fifty million light years from Earth, 11 00:00:41,280 --> 00:00:44,320 Speaker 1: roamed just a little too close to a supermassive black 12 00:00:44,360 --> 00:00:48,600 Speaker 1: hole and became ensnared in its grasp. Unlike most stars, 13 00:00:48,600 --> 00:00:53,320 Speaker 1: though it managed to escape the black hole's full embrace. Still, 14 00:00:53,479 --> 00:00:56,800 Speaker 1: the black hole's immense mass about four hundred thousand times 15 00:00:56,800 --> 00:01:00,000 Speaker 1: out of our Sun, and its gravitational pull has called 16 00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:02,960 Speaker 1: lost the star to become stuck in an elliptical orbit 17 00:01:03,040 --> 00:01:06,559 Speaker 1: around it. And I said that it's a red giant star, 18 00:01:06,680 --> 00:01:10,200 Speaker 1: but really it was originally a red giant when it arrived. 19 00:01:10,760 --> 00:01:13,959 Speaker 1: Since then, the star's hydrogen rich outer layers have been 20 00:01:14,000 --> 00:01:16,840 Speaker 1: stripped away by the black hole, leaving just a helium 21 00:01:16,880 --> 00:01:20,080 Speaker 1: rich core called a white dwarf. It orbits the black 22 00:01:20,120 --> 00:01:23,400 Speaker 1: hole once every nine hours, and as pieces are stripped away, 23 00:01:23,680 --> 00:01:27,000 Speaker 1: they blend with other materials circling the black hole. That 24 00:01:27,080 --> 00:01:30,520 Speaker 1: process generates bursts of X rays, a sort of beacon 25 00:01:30,560 --> 00:01:34,800 Speaker 1: to us earthlings. Andrew King is a professor of theoretical 26 00:01:34,840 --> 00:01:38,200 Speaker 1: astrophysics at the University of Leicester in the UK, and 27 00:01:38,400 --> 00:01:41,200 Speaker 1: he performed the study that found the reason for the 28 00:01:41,360 --> 00:01:44,400 Speaker 1: X ray flairs. He said in a statement, the dwarf 29 00:01:44,480 --> 00:01:47,400 Speaker 1: star will try hard to get away, but there's no escape. 30 00:01:47,720 --> 00:01:50,480 Speaker 1: The black hole will eat it more and more slowly, 31 00:01:50,800 --> 00:01:55,760 Speaker 1: but never stop. Scientists collected the data using NASA's Shandra 32 00:01:55,960 --> 00:01:59,640 Speaker 1: X ray Observatory and the European Space Agencies x MM 33 00:01:59,760 --> 00:02:03,920 Speaker 1: new an X ray space observatory. The encounter between this 34 00:02:03,960 --> 00:02:06,280 Speaker 1: star and the black hole is an example of one 35 00:02:06,280 --> 00:02:09,959 Speaker 1: of the most cataclysmic events in the universe. It's possible 36 00:02:09,960 --> 00:02:13,360 Speaker 1: that the collision will generate gravitational waves or ripples in 37 00:02:13,440 --> 00:02:17,720 Speaker 1: space time. Scientists typically only see these kinds of ripples 38 00:02:17,800 --> 00:02:21,840 Speaker 1: during truly devastating events, such as when neutron stars crash 39 00:02:21,880 --> 00:02:27,000 Speaker 1: into each other or supernova stars explode. It's not rare 40 00:02:27,040 --> 00:02:30,880 Speaker 1: for scientists to find so called tidal disruption events, which 41 00:02:30,960 --> 00:02:33,600 Speaker 1: is the technical term for when a black hole tears 42 00:02:33,600 --> 00:02:36,560 Speaker 1: a star a limb from limb, But they say they 43 00:02:36,560 --> 00:02:39,440 Speaker 1: were incredibly fortunate to have detected evidence of a star 44 00:02:39,560 --> 00:02:43,079 Speaker 1: that survived its initial black hole encounter, an event that's 45 00:02:43,160 --> 00:02:46,480 Speaker 1: much more rare, partly because the encounter has such a 46 00:02:46,520 --> 00:02:49,960 Speaker 1: short duration of only around two thousand years, which is 47 00:02:50,080 --> 00:02:53,959 Speaker 1: just a flicker of time in the universe's reckoning. More 48 00:02:54,040 --> 00:02:58,400 Speaker 1: massive stars might regularly survive black holes, but their orbits 49 00:02:58,480 --> 00:03:01,680 Speaker 1: around the holes would take how much time that scientists 50 00:03:01,760 --> 00:03:04,919 Speaker 1: would never have the opportunity to catalog multiple X ray 51 00:03:04,919 --> 00:03:07,840 Speaker 1: bursts the way that they are now. In the end, 52 00:03:08,040 --> 00:03:10,960 Speaker 1: the white Dwarf could downgrade to a planet with a 53 00:03:11,080 --> 00:03:15,000 Speaker 1: mass roughly that of Jupiter's. According to King, that process 54 00:03:15,040 --> 00:03:23,320 Speaker 1: could take as long as a trillion years. Today's episode 55 00:03:23,360 --> 00:03:25,799 Speaker 1: was written by David Chandler and produced by Tyler Playing. 56 00:03:26,240 --> 00:03:27,919 Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other topics, is 57 00:03:27,960 --> 00:03:30,239 Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is a 58 00:03:30,240 --> 00:03:32,600 Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts in My 59 00:03:32,639 --> 00:03:35,520 Speaker 1: Heart radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, 60 00:03:35,600 --> 00:03:37,320 Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.