Produced by: Manoj Kumar
A strange explosion, EP240408A, was detected by the Einstein Probe spacecraft in April last year. Its unusual nature has baffled scientists, leaving them searching for answers about its origin.
Astronomers first thought EP240408A was a gamma-ray burst from colliding neutron stars or the death of a massive star, but these ideas couldn’t fully explain the explosion’s peculiar characteristics.
The possibility emerged that EP240408A could be a tidal disruption event (TDE), where a supermassive black hole shreds a star that wanders too close. Yet, this event didn’t align perfectly with typical TDEs.
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Brendan O’Connor, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, noted, "It doesn’t tick all the boxes for any known phenomenon. The alternative is that we are seeing something entirely new!"
Scientists proposed EP240408A might be a "jetted TDE," a rare cosmic event where a black hole’s magnetic fields launch powerful jets of energy into space while devouring a star.
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In typical TDEs, a star is torn apart by a supermassive black hole’s immense gravity in a process called “spaghettification,” where the star stretches into plasma before forming an accretion disk.
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Observations from NASA’s NuSTAR and NICER instruments revealed EP240408A’s short duration and high luminosity, characteristics difficult to explain by conventional scenarios, pointing to something novel.
Credit : NASA
An international team of astronomers continues to study this event using both ground-based and space telescopes to uncover the physics behind EP240408A’s bizarre explosion.
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If confirmed, EP240408A could represent a new kind of cosmic phenomenon, expanding our understanding of black holes, tidal disruption events, and the extraordinary forces at play in the universe.
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