Dormant black hole 'awakens' to devour star

Scientists reported Wednesday that they witnessed in unprecedented detail a star being ripped to shreds and devoured by a dormant supermassive black hole. The celestial feeding frenzy -- known as a tidal disruption event -- was detected from the high-energy, X-ray echoes emitted as debris from the hapless star swirled in a vortex near the black hole's centre. "Never before have we been able to see strong gravity effects from a dormant black hole," Erin Kara, a Hubble postdoctoral fellow at the U