Scientists have previously linked the X-ray signal to the attack of black holes on the star

About 3 billion years ago, the star was pulled into the gravitational confrontation of two giant black holes — and now astronomers are observing the "scream" of X-ray radiation from this event. If the hypothesis is confirmed, it will be the most distant case of a star being "attacked" by two black holes. This was reported by Live Science magazine on December 10.

An international team of astronomers has presented the results of a multi-year observation of the weakest known variable X-ray burst. The source of XID 925 was first discovered in 1999 as part of the Chandra Deep Field South survey. Back then, it looked like a bright X-ray dot, but over the years, saturation dropped by almost 40 times.

A bright flash followed by a prolonged extinction is a typical sign of a star's tidal disruption event when it gets too close to a supermassive black hole. A giant gravity tears apart the star, a process that astronomers call "spaghetti." As a result, the material forms a hot accretion disk that emits powerful X-rays, and then gradually fades.

Allegedly, the XID 925 was already considered one of the most distant and weakest cases of decent destruction, but in 1999 something strange happened: its brightness suddenly increased by 27 times, and then collapsed just as abruptly. The authors of the new paper believe that this was not an ordinary case of decent destruction, but an event caused by two supermassive black holes.

According to them, the star was torn apart by a central large black hole, forming an accretion disk. Then a second one passed nearby, which either disrupted the disk or literally passed through it, causing a sharp release of energy and a burst of X-rays. After the smaller black hole had moved away, the system returned to a stable state.

The scientists emphasize that the statement does not perfectly explain all the data, but at the moment it looks the most convincing. If confirmed, this will be the most distant known case of tidal disruption of a star by a binary system of black holes, which opens an important window into understanding the processes occurring in young galactic nuclei.

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On December 9, Science American magazine reported the discovery of the oldest supernova that died in the explosion. It was clarified that the age of the object refers to the period when the universe was younger than 1 billion years, and the cosmos was only 5% of its current age. According to the publication, scientists were surprised that the explosion resembles modern supernovae.

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