The Death of a Star

In further news from NASA, their scientists believe they have discovered extremely strong evidence for the existence of supermassive black holes – by observing a star being torn apart. Although the light that allows us to observe this is now four billion years old, the event was one trillion times brighter than our own sun.

Black holes exert extraordinary gravity, as is relatively common knowledge, but – like all sources of gravity – it grows weaker with distance. A star passing close to a black hole finds itself falling gradually within the black hole’s sphere of influence. Being potentially millions of kilometers across, however, the star’s own gravity is capable of maintaining itself for a time. Rather than being instantly destroyed, it instead warps and stretches, being pulled out of shape towards the black hole.

As the star observed by NASA moved slowly closer to the black hole, the force pulling at it grew stronger, until the black hole’s gravity exceeded the star’s ability to hold itself together. At this moment, the star’s mass was torn from it, being wrenched into the black hole and quite literally torn apart.

The light we observe is caused by the enormous energies exciting the star’s atoms, throwing off vast quantities of light throughout the visible and invisible spectra – truly, this must be one of the most dazzling displays the universe has to offer us.