An artist’s concept of a tidal disruption event that happens when a star passes fatally close to a supermassive black hole, which reacts by launching a relativistic jet, in this handout image released on June 15, 2018 and obtained by Reuters on February 5, 2026.
| Photo Credit:
NRAO/AUI/NSF/NASA
Scientists are observing
the behavior of a supermassive black hole that is displaying
exceptionally messy eating habits.
Primarily using radio telescopes in New Mexico and South
Africa, they are watching the black hole, residing at the center
of a galaxy far beyond our Milky Way, as it continues to belch
out a fast-moving jet of material after ripping apart and eating
a star that made the mistake of wandering too close.
What makes this stellar fatal encounter unusual is the
intensity and duration of the black hole’s post-meal
indigestion.
Jet defies time
Material left over from the star did not begin shooting into
space until two years after it was shredded into its component
gases by the black hole’s gravitational forces. But this jet now
has been shooting into space for six years – longer than has
ever been observed before – and continues to intensify in what
has become one of the most powerful single events ever detected
in the universe.
“The exponential rise in the luminosity of this source is
unprecedented. It’s now about 50 times brighter than when it was
first discovered, and is now incredibly bright for an object in
radio waves. This has been going on for years now, and no sign
of stopping. That is super unusual,” said University of Oregon
astrophysicist Yvette Cendes, lead author of the study published
on Thursday in the Astrophysical Journal.
665 million light-years from Earth
Black holes are exceptionally dense objects with gravity so
strong not even light can escape. This black hole is located
about 665 million light years from Earth. A light-year is the
distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5
trillion km).
The black hole is about 5 million times more massive than
the sun. That makes it roughly comparable to the supermassive
black hole at the center of our own galaxy, which has a mass
about 4 million times greater than the sun.
The doomed star was a type called a red dwarf that was about
a tenth as massive as the sun.
An event horizon is the point of no return for material
drawn by a black hole’s gravitational strength. When a star is
pulled apart by a black hole, it is called a tidal disruption
event because it results from the same gravitational dynamics
responsible for ocean tides on Earth.
“Any object that approaches too close to the event horizon
of a black hole risks being torn apart by tidal forces and
stretched into a long stream of debris, a process called
‘spaghettification,'” University of Arizona astrophysicist and
study co-author Kate Alexander said.
“After the star was torn apart, some of this gas fell
towards the black hole and heated up, and the black hole
began to consume the star. The bright radio light that we see
with our telescopes is produced by star stuff that got close to
but never actually crossed the event horizon – like a picky baby
chewing her food and violently spitting it back out, rather than
swallowing it,” Alexander said.
The researchers are not exactly sure why this tidal
disruption event with its jet, formally called a relativistic
jet, has been so spectacular.
“As for what causes the relativistic jet in the first place
– we don’t actually know, and it’s an active area of research.
Likely it has something to do with magnetic fields around the
black hole, but also clearly has to be something unusual or else
we’d see more of them,” Cendes said.
The question now is how long this jet will continue to
intensify. The researchers suspect it may peak later this year
or next year.
“After the emission peaks, it should fade slowly, so we will
probably still be able to see it for a decade or more,”
Alexander said.
Published on February 5, 2026
