BIRMINGHAM, UK — Scientists had a rare look at a black hole pulling a star apart over the last six months.<br /><br />Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory observed a black hole sucking in a faraway star, shredding it into thin strands of stellar material.<br /><br />This process, known as "spaghettification," happens because of black holes' powerful gravitational force.<br /><br />Observed in the Eridanus constellation, about 215 million light-years away from Earth, this was the closest such event astronomers have ever observed.<br /><br />"When an unlucky star wanders too close to a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy, the extreme gravitational pull of the black hole shreds the star into thin streams of material'" said the study's author, Thomas Wevers, in a press release about the discovery.<br /><br />When these strands get sucked into the black hole, they release a powerful flare of energy that astronomers can detect, even from hundreds of millions of light-years away, according to the study, which was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.<br /><br />The research team discovered the star soon after it started getting ripped apart, and observed it through ultraviolet, optical, X-ray and radio wavelengths. The combination of the star's proximity and timing allowed the astronomers to study it in "unprecedented detail," according to the press release.<br /><br />Scientists from NASA and several universities theorize that quite a few massive black holes lurk at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy. Luckily, these same scientists calculate the chances of such a black hole getting close enough to gobble up our sun and Earth, is extremely low.
