Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 363, Issue 6426, Pages 531-+Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.aar7480
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Funding
- NASA [PF6-170156, PF6-170150, PF5-160144, PF5-160145, NAS8-03060]
- NASA through the Astrophysics Theory Program [NNX17AK43G]
- NASA through SAO award [SV2-82023]
- Chandra X-ray Observatory Center
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The tidal forces close to massive black holes can rip apart stars that come too close to them. As the resulting stellar debris spirals toward the black hole, the debris heats up and emits x-rays. We report observations of a stable 131-second x-ray quasi-periodic oscillation from the tidal disruption event ASASSN-14li. Assuming the black hole mass indicated by host galaxy scaling relations, these observations imply that the periodicity originates from close to the event horizon and that the black hole is rapidly spinning. Our findings demonstrate that tidal disruption events can generate quasi-periodic oscillations that encode information about the physical properties of their black holes.
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