Black hole lets rip a huge stellar belch, as scientist watches from Eugene

Yvette Cendes has watched a swirling disk of dust become among the brightest lights ever detected in the universe. 

What she is studying, however, is not what most would describe as heavenly. More like a burp. 

A very long, drawn-out retch from a black hole that chewed up a star that drifted too close. 

“It’s going to basically unbind the star,” said Cendes from her office at University of Oregon, where she is an astronomer and assistant professor. 

“[Black holes] have huge gravitational pulls, because they can be so big,” Cendes said. “Weird things can happen when you get close to them.” 

This cosmic case has only grown more unusual the longer she follows it — and it’s unfolding at a time when universities are working to keep the public informed about science while also navigating limited research funding.

A black hole is an astronomical body so compact that its gravity typically prevents anything, including light, from escaping. 

The star Cendes is studying was spotted wandering near the black hole in 2018, but it was not swallowed. Instead, it became trapped in what scientists call a tidal disruption, enduring an uneven gravitational pull — the same kind of force that creates uneven ocean tides on Earth, only far more extreme. 

With the event about 665 million light-years away, Cendes observes it through radio telescopes that detect electromagnetic waves from space and convert them into digital data. She and her students analyze that information on a supercomputer on campus, tracking how the radio signal brightens and changes over time.

Enough data had been collected to report findings in an academic article Feb. 5 in The Astrophysical Journal, where their calculations also suggest that the radiation from the star has been shooting out in one direction as a single jet. 

The source of that energy is not easy to picture. At its core, it comes from an idea rooted in Albert Einstein’s work on how mass and energy are connected.

Where ‘Star Wars’ meets science 

Cendes’ research involves dense mathematics to track changes in energy coming from the black hole and star. While that language comes easily to astronomers, she knows it can be inaccessible to others. To help people understand, Cendes turns to pop culture sci-fi. 

She points to “Star Wars” and the empire’s Death Star space station, where a breathless crew hovers over glowing control panels and deploys a planet-destroying laser. Fans have long estimated how much energy the Death Star would need to obliterate a planet. This black hole, Cendes said, is emitting at least a trillion times that amount — and possibly closer to 100 trillion times.

Understanding science through the lens of popular culture is part of what James Phillips, a doctoral student and graduate teaching fellow at the University of Oregon, studies in a different department a few buildings down from Cendes. 

“Even if everyone hasn’t seen ‘Star Wars,’ there’s a good chance everyone is familiar with the concept of a Death Star,” he said. “That allows us a scale of comparison, even if infinitesimal, it still gives us a frame of reference that is better than anything we have in real life.” 

But these comparisons can blur the lines of reality, creating confusing narratives of risks from space. While the Death Star comparison helps convey the intensity of the black hole’s power, it does not signal danger to Earth. The black hole is far too distant to pose any risk. 

Both Phillips and Cendes are part of the University of Oregon’s growing space research community. 

Phillips, based in the School of Journalism and Communication, studies how people perceive risks like asteroids and space debris. This debris, which moves like bullets, consists of human-made objects like old satellites, rocket parts or fragments that remain trapped in Earth’s orbit.

Cendes, who joined the university after postdoctoral work at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is helping build a new astronomy program for undergraduate students.

“Space inspires people,” Cendes said. 

The belch continues  

The intrigue of space draws people into scientific and math fields that can otherwise feel intimidating, while also producing research with real-world benefits.

“Astronomy is not just launching money off into space,” she said. 

Research on hostile environments in space helps scientists test ideas that also apply to Earth, informing studies of our own planet’s environment and the technologies used to observe it.

That’s why, even as Cendes casually describes astronomy as “cool,” she also describes it as research that is fundamental — and which paves the way for breakthroughs here on Earth.

She pointed to Wi-Fi as one example. Techniques developed by astronomers to study faint radio signals from space were later adapted for everyday wireless technology. The same is true for GPS, which must account for relativity — the theory that time passes at slightly different speeds in space than it does on Earth.

Funding for space research like Cendes’ comes largely from public sources. Proposed federal budget cuts last year threatened to sharply reduce the National Science Foundation’s budget, raising the possibility that radio telescopes she relies on could be shut down.

Cendes and other astronomers lobbied Congress, working with Oregon’s U.S. Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden to preserve access. The final cuts were smaller than initially proposed, allowing research like this black hole study to continue.

She expects that its belching waves will continue, possibly peaking in 2027 — with more questions that will ripple ahead with it.

“What exactly is in a black hole? We don’t actually know,” she said. “Black holes are something you can’t escape.” 

“What we’re really studying is the environment around the black hole, and they can do extreme things,” she said, noting that such work can lead to breakthroughs later. And why, she made this vow: “We’re going to keep watching.”