Greater Noida (Science Desk): It may seem like a scene from a science-fiction film, but it is completely true. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has recently captured such a wonderful and terrifying astronomical event, where a hungry black hole was seen swallowing a star by tearing it apart with its gravitational force. This event took place about 600 million light years away from Earth and is called a Tidal Disruption Event (TDE) in scientific language.
When a star comes very close to a black hole, its gravitational force pulls it and makes it long and thin – which scientists call “spaghettification”. In this process, the star is torn apart and most of it is swallowed by the black hole. During this, an explosion of extreme energy occurs, which telescopes like Hubble are able to capture.
First offset TDE observed
Of the nearly 100 TDE events recorded so far, this one is unique because it is an offset TDE. That is, the black hole is not located at the center of its host galaxy, as supermassive black holes usually are. Instead, it is 2,600 light-years away from the center. For comparison, this distance is just one-tenth of the distance between our Sun and the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. “This event, called AT2024tvd, is the first offset TDE observed by the Optical Sky Survey. This raises hopes that in the future we may be able to detect this mysterious population of wandering black holes,” said Yuhan Yao, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley.
A black hole revealed itself from 600 million light-years away when it ripped apart and swallowed a star. The resulting burst of radiation is the bright dot just off-center captured in this @NASAHubble image. https://t.co/g7mSVRZHd1 pic.twitter.com/7FnDsSmCb2
— NASA (@NASA) May 8, 2025
Two black holes in one galaxy – but without gravitational binding!
What makes this discovery even more mysterious is the fact that there is already a much more massive black hole in the same galaxy, located just 2,600 light-years away from this smaller black hole. Surprisingly, the two are not gravitationally bound to each other, that is, they do not form a binary black hole system.
According to NASA, it is possible that over time the smaller black hole will merge with the larger black hole while spiraling towards the center of the galaxy. But at the moment, they are too far away to come into gravitational bond.
Why did the black hole stray?
Scientists believe that this black hole must have existed at the center of the galaxy at some point. But if three black holes were present there simultaneously and came into gravitational contact with each other, then it is possible that the third black hole was pushed out of the center in this way. This is called the “three-body problem” in astronomy.
Another record-breaking event of last year
This is not the first time scientists have seen a black hole swallowing a star. The black hole LID-568, discovered in November 2024, was swallowing so much matter that it was active 40 times faster than the theoretical laws of physics – the Eddington limit. This discovery not only proves the existence of stray black holes in the universe, but also shows how dynamic and changing even giant structures like our galaxy are with time. This is a glimpse of the mysteries of the universe that we have not yet fully understood.
