Thomas Wevers News Today

Analysis reveals a tiny black hole repeatedly punching through a larger black hole’s disk of gas. At the heart of a far-off galaxy, a supermassive black hole appears to have had a case of the hiccups. Astronomers from MIT, Italy, the Czech Republic, and elsewhere have found that a previously q

Two teams of astronomers using ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope have observed repeated outbursts of light from inactive black holes that partially destroy stars again and again. This discovery is unexpected, since outbursts of black holes usually appear only once when a black hole consumes a star. 

Black holes can rip apart stars in so-called tidal disruption events, but one star in a distant galaxy seems to have survived the encounter.

As the star is shredded, its remnants are transformed into a stream of debris that rains back down onto the black hole to form a very hot, very bright disk of material swirling around the black hole, called an accretion disc.

Supermassive black holes devour stellar material just like their more petite counterparts, an MIT study finds.