Help! A star went missing. Who’s the culprit?
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Black holes usually sit in the middle of galaxies, quietly waiting for stars to wander too close. But sometimes… they don’t stay put!
Enter Yuhan Yao at University of California, Berkeley. Yao scanned the galactic edge with powerful telescopes. The telescopes watch for sudden flashes – the light of a star being ripped apart by a black hole.
The result? One flash came from far outside the galaxy’s center. A hint! Possibly a wandering black hole, eating stars where least expected. What a surprise to our understanding of galaxies!
Who knew? The killer of a star lurks in darkness. The Black Dahlia…
Reference: Yao, Y., Ward, C., Dix, C., Somalwar, J. J., Newsome, M., Arcavi, I., Horesh, A., Sfaradi, I., Kasliwal, M. M., Kulkarni, S. R., Laher, R. R., Masci, F. J., Neill, J. D., Rigault, M., Rusholme, B., Sollerman, J., Taggart, K., & Yan, L. (2025). AT2024tvd: The first off-nuclear tidal disruption event discovered in optical sky surveys. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/add7de