On Nov. 11, 2014, a global network of telescopes picked up signals from 300 million light years away that were created by a tidal disruption flare—an explosion of electromagnetic energy that occurs when a black hole rips ...
Astronomy
Mar 19, 2018
5
916
In the center of a distant galaxy, almost 300 million light years from Earth, scientists have discovered a supermassive black hole that is "choking" on a sudden influx of stellar debris.
Astronomy
Mar 15, 2017
34
695
Scientists from MIPT, the University of Oxford, and the Russian Academy of Sciences have estimated the number of stars disrupted by solitary supermassive black holes in galactic centers that formed via mergers of galaxies ...
Astronomy
Feb 16, 2017
3
12
A giant black hole ripped apart a nearby star and then continued to feed off its remains for close to a decade, according to research led by the University of New Hampshire. This black hole meal is more than 10 times longer ...
Astronomy
Feb 06, 2017
6
1521
In 2015, the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN) detected an event, named ASASSN-15lh, that was recorded as the brightest supernova ever—and categorised as a superluminous supernova, the explosion of an extremely ...
Astronomy
Dec 12, 2016
1
673
Supermassive black holes, with their immense gravitational pull, are notoriously good at clearing out their immediate surroundings by eating nearby objects. When a star passes within a certain distance of a black hole, the ...
Astronomy
Sep 15, 2016
3
65
Roughly 90 percent of the biggest black holes in the known universe are dormant, meaning that they are not actively devouring matter and, consequently, not giving off any light or other radiation. But sometimes a star wanders ...
Astronomy
Jun 22, 2016
13
1112
When a star comes too close to a black hole, the intense gravity of the black hole results in tidal forces that can rip the star apart. In these events, called tidal disruptions, some of the stellar debris is flung outward ...
Astronomy
Oct 21, 2015
6
5670
