A roaming black hole just demolished a star and sucked it dry

Written by on May 16, 2025

The drama began in 2024, when a sky-scanning telescope known as the Zwicky Transient Facility picked up a sudden brightening in the night sky. But there was a twist: the object, now named AT2024tvd, didn’t match typical patterns for known cosmic events. It wasn’t near a galaxy’s center where supermassive black holes usually reside, but appeared over 2,500 light-years off-center.

The automated system didn’t flag it as a black hole candidate, and why would it? Things didn’t add up. However, after more detailed observation, the picture came into . . .



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