Astronomers May Have Witnessed a Star Torn Apart By a Black Hole

Bad Astronomy reports Astronomers may have witnessed a star torn apart by a black hole. "On March 28, 2011, NASA’s Swift satellite caught a flash of high-energy X-rays pouring in from deep space. Swift is designed to do this, and since its launch in 2004 has seen hundreds of such things, usually caused by stars exploding at the ends of their lives. But this time was hardly 'usual'. It didn’t see a star exploding as a supernova, it saw a star literally getting torn apart as it fell too close to a black hole!"

At it's peak, the light was a trillion times brighter than the sun! Though this burst had an unusual pattern to the light growing and fading.



So they think it's this happening, "What fits all the data is that of a star orbiting the center of the black hole. Perhaps it was on a safe orbit but got flung closer to the black hole after a close encounter with another star or gas cloud, or perhaps it started out close and over millions of years its orbit has brought it closer and closer to that monster at the galaxy’s heart."