Animation of a star torn apart by a black hole

In June 2010, astronomers saw the eruption of light from a star as it was shredded by a supermassive black hole. This happened 2.7 billion light years away in a distant galaxy!

You can see HD versions of this at Hubblesite: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/arch...

Credit: NASA, S. Gezari (The Johns Hopkins University), and J. Guillochon (University of California, Santa Cruz)

• Category

  Science & Technology

[mjwhisp]

So, people who don't "believe" in black holes. Here's a classic example of what disproves your "you can't see it so it doesn't exist" logic: you cannot see gravity so why do you know it exists? Because you understand it, right? But it still is technically just a theory. Well, black holes are also theoretical objects, but lots of evidence and investigation has been put into them. Perhaps if you kept your mind a bit more open to new ideas you'd understand and even learn a thing or two. :)

[TheWalrus0608]

fuking pwned stupid star

[Realfoxhawk]

Most religious people I know believe in black holes and are not lunatics. Your stereotyping and hateful comment certainly makes you sound like a lunatic. You are the kind of person athiests hate because it gives them a bad name.

[2010paultron]

13 dislikes? fuck you religious lunatics, go live in a cave somewhere and be fearful of thunder!

[Xunkun]

Well, a star like the sun is 100 earths across. And if the sun was shrunk to about an armspan, earth would be a small marble about 30 steps away (liberal approximations here, of course). CY Canis Major, the largest known star, on the same scale would take a minute to walk across the diameter (and would also be about the range of Saturn's orbit).

Guesstimating, I would say that about at 0:23 is when it's as big as the entire solar system.

[ex0duzz]

So things can escape from a black hole that big?

Yeah, you'd just need the force of an exploding sun, but you can do it!

[truther7077]

Are you seeking the truth about the universe? Search for "Truth Contest" in Google, go to the website, then click on "The Present" and read what it says. This is truth you can check, and it will blow your mind.

[youdontknowxpand]

One can tell that something very massive exists just by the gravitational lensing effect. That's one way you can prove that black holes exist and where. It consists in a massive body "bending" light and that causes the observer to see stars that suposedly are behing that massive object. You can see that effect in a solar eclipse, where the stars behind the sun are visible on the corona. That was used to prove that gravity can indeed bend light.

[Unstizzy]

really?!!? I mean really? You took that seriously.

[Jakub Makovsky]

Poor star... R.I.U.(Rest in Universe)