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Space

We've seen a gigantic black hole tear a star in half and eat it

By Adam Mann

14 June 2018

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

A greedy black hole sits within these two merging galaxies

Chandra X-ray Observatory

Astronomers have gotten one of their best looks yet at a black hole devouring a star and spitting out its remains at a quarter of the speed of light.

In 2005, a team noticed a bright flare of infrared light in a pair of colliding galaxies 134 million light-years away. The source turned out to be a star falling into a gigantic black hole that weighs 20 million times the mass of our sun.

While a few similar events have been seen before, they have…

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