Margot Robbie isn’t the only star in the “Barbie” universe.
Astronomers have detected the astonishing interstellar event created by a massive black hole devouring a star — with scientists calling “Scary Barbie” one of the most powerful cosmic displays ever documented.
The intergalactic gobblefest was detailed recently in the preprint server arXiv and is slated to be published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters.”
“This is the most energetic phenomenon I have ever encountered,” Danny Milisavljevic, study co-author and assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Purdue University, said in a statement regarding the literal star destroyer.
“Scary Barbie” — a take on its alphanumeric name ZTF20abrbeie and a reference to its awesome power — is the “absurd” event that was formed during the death throes of a star being obliterated by a colossal black hole.
“We think a very supermassive black hole pulled in a star and ripped it apart,” graduate student Bhagya Subrayan, who collaborated on the research.
“The forces around a black hole, called tidal disruption, pull other objects apart in a process called ‘spaghettification.’ We think that’s what happened, but on extreme time scales.”
Like a Phoenix rising from the interstellar ashes, the resultant supernova — or star explosion in layperson’s terms — was the brightest ever observed.
Milisavljevic described, “If you take a typical supernova and multiply it a thousand times, we’re still not at how bright this is — and supernovas are among the most luminous objects in the sky.” In other words, the star went out with a bigger bang than most.
Along with being bigger and brighter, “Scary Barbie” lasted preternaturally long as well.
While most transient events generally last weeks or a month, this cosmic combustion burned incandescently for over two years like a cosmic Menorah with no indication that’s fizzling out anytime soon.
However, researchers point out that it might just seem longer because of its far away location and the fact that relativity slows down light en route to our eyes.
“There are few things in the universe that can be so powerful, reactions that can be this long-lived,” gushed Milisavljevic.
How does one observe such a “far out” phenomenon?
The team deployed the AI-powered Recommender Engine For Intelligent Transient Tracking (REFITT), which “combs through observations from a number of telescopes around the world.”
Scientists were able to determine the transients’ existence through data harvested from the Lick Observatory in California and the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.
Ultimately, Milisavljevic believes that this luminescent event sheds light on the fact that “we are still uncovering mysteries and exploring wonders in the universe – things no one has ever seen before.”
Speaking of supernovas, last month, NASA’s James Webb Telescope detected a star that was 30 times the sun’s mass and was getting ready to blow.