Long ago, in a very distant dwarf galaxy, a drama of cosmic proportions is unfolding. A star gets too close to a lurking black hole and gets sucked in by its extreme gravity.
The star cannot go. He is drawn closer and closer in a spiral, until he is finally torn apart.
The black hole gobbles up much of the star and flings the rest away in a giant arc of red-hot material that outshines all other light from the dwarf galaxy’s stars.
850 million years later, in June 2020, astronomers on Earth happen to point their telescopes at the dwarf galaxy. The team searches for supernovas, exploding stars, but suddenly sees the flash of the star’s agony.
After more than two years of analysis, the researchers have no doubts about the cause.
A star has been swallowed by a black hole — the kind researchers have rarely seen a trace of.
2023-08-13 23:53:16
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