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Scientists Confirm Existence of Event Horizon

By Dustin Braden | Update Date: Nov 30, 2015 05:30 PM EST

Scientists at Johns Hopkins University have captured images of a hungry black hole burping out the residue of a star it had just devoured.

The research detailing the finding was published in the journal Science and looked at a sun that was roughly the same size as our sun, according to a press release from Johns Hopkins University.

"These events are extremely rare," said Sjoert van Velzen, a Hubble fellow at Johns Hopkins. "It's the first time we see everything from the stellar destruction followed by the launch of a conical outflow, also called a jet, and we watched it unfold over several months."

The research confirms the long-held theory of an "event horizon," which is when plasma made of the elementary particles in a magnetic field manages to escape from a black hole.

The work was carried out by a team of 13 scientists spread around the globe including the United States, Australia, Great Britain, and the Netherlands and led by van Velzen.

The black hole that the researches studied was relative small and weak as far as black holes are concerned, but it is also still big enough to completely consumer a star. It is believed that a black hole is at the middle of most galaxies.

The research was triggered in December 2014 when a team of scientists in Hawaii tweeted they had captured images of a black hole eating a star. Van Velzen saw the tweet and reached out to other scientists to have them turn their eyes to the skies to capture the rest of the process, allowing the scientists to capture the event horizon.

"The destruction of a star by a black hole is beautifully complicated, and far from understood," van Velzen said. "From our observations, we learn the streams of stellar debris can organize and make a jet rather quickly, which is valuable input for constructing a complete theory of these events."

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