The rare phenomenon was discovered by the European VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry) Network, a group of 21 radio telescopes all over the world that combine observations to make extremely high-precision measurements of faraway galaxies.
The telescope network observed a jet of particles moving close to the speed of light gushing out of a supermassive black hole in the Draco constellation 3.9 billion light years away. The immense gravity of the black hole captured a nearby star, drawing its gas into a disc around the hole as gravitational energy was converted into electromagnetic radiation, creating a bright light that's visible at many different wavelengths.
Some of the star's material was ejected from the black hole in spectacular fashion, flying out in a narrow beam of particles known as a relativistic jet. After observing the jets for three years, astronomers confirmed they stayed unusually static. "We looked for motion close to the light speed in the jet, so-called superluminal motion," said Jun Yang, of Onsala Space Observatory, who led the research.
"Over our three years of observations such movement should have been clearly detectable. But our images reveal instead very compact and steady emission - there is no apparent motion. These are some of the sharpest measurements ever made by radio telescopes", he continued.
Astronomers are now looking to the next generation of radio telescope stop tell us more about what happens when stars are eaten by black holes. Earlier this month China put the finishing touches on the world's largest radio telescope – a 1,6500-foot-wide dish located in southwest China. The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope which will begin operations in September will peer deep into the universe in a bid to discover extraterrestrial life somewhere out in the cosmos.