This stellar slaughter was spotted by scientists who study the X-rays bouncing around the swirling disk of matter surrounding the giant black hole. The method used to analyze this event — named Swift J1644+57 — could help solve the mystery of how the largest black holes in the universe grew to such e**rmous sizes, the authors of the new research said.
At the core of almost every galaxy lies a monster black hole — in some cases, the largest black holes in the universe, millions to billions of times the mass of the sun. Astro**mers think vast amounts of energy from these supermassive black holes can influence the evolution of the galaxies in which they live. Read more...