Bad Astronomy | A black hole tore a star apart and ate it, revealing its mass and spin syfy.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from syfy.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Soon multiple observatories on and above the world were peering at it, measuring its light and taking the measure of this event. Its position on the sky corresponded to a somewhat ordinary galaxy about 730 million light years from Earth. But, like all decent-sized galaxies, this one has a supermassive black hole in its center. The exact mass of the black hole isn t well constrained, but is 5 to perhaps 30 million times the mass of the Sun. This actually puts it on the small end of such beasts; many are billions of times the mass of the Sun.
Still, it s not something you want to toy with. But a star in that galaxy frakked around and found out.