Black hole rips star to shreds in explosion seen across space
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Scientist have observed a star being spaghettified, then swallowed by a super massive spinning black hole.
The event dubbed ASASSN-15Ih, named after the All-Sky Automated Search for Super Nova, was first believed to be a giant super nova.Scientists continued to observe the bright light for the next ten months, concluding that it was a tidal disruption event or TDE.
A tidal disruption event is the destruction of a star by a rapidly rotating, super massive black hole.
As the lower mass star passed by the super massive black hole, it was sucked in by the gravitational pull and then stretched out like spaghetti until it was ripped apart, causing the super luminous event originally observed.
Artist's renderings show what the TBE event might have looked like when the smaller sun-like star passed too closely to the black hole.
As the star is ripped apart, massive pieces of star bits Collide with each other.
You could read more about the tidal disruption event in Eric Mac's article at Cnet.com.
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