Hubble Telescope Finds a Black Hole Twisting a Star into a Doughnut as It Swallows It

The Hubble Space Telescope captures the final moments of the life of a star being swallowed by a black hole.

The astronauts discovered a black hole that rips apart a star, stretches it, and shapes its remnants into a stellar doughnut the size of the solar system. The devoured star is located at a distance of almost 300 million light years in the center of the ESO 583-G004 galaxy.

Scientists used several artist's illustrations to explain how a black hole can swallow a bypassing star:

1. A star passes near a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy.
2. The star's outer gases are drawn into the black hole's gravitational field.
3. The star is being torn apart by tidal forces.
4. The remnants of the star are drawn into a donut-shaped ring around the black hole and fall into the black hole, releasing a huge amount of light and high-energy radiation.

Scientists say that a star is only torn apart in this way a few times every 100 thousand years in a galaxy with a supermassive black hole at its core. These stellar killings are called "tidal disruption events."

Astronomers use the Hubble telescope to find out the details of what happens when a star plunges into the gravitational abyss.