Monster Black Hole Eats Star, Returns Leftovers

A supermassive black hole anchoring the center of a nearby galaxy has been caught in a rarely seen double act: ripping apart a nearby sun-size star and shooting out jets of debris from its center at close to light speed. When a star wanders too close to a black hole, especially the ultraheavy kind that lurks at the center of many galaxies, the black hole's intense gravitational forces pull apart the star and form a disk of orbiting debris. By looking carefully at the unusual galactic moment, res