Scientists have used a sophisticated simulation to reconstruct the brutal death of a star that wandered too close to a supermassive black hole and was shredded to bits.
The team, led by researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Racah Institute of Physics, retold the entire story of this so-called tidal disruption event (TDE) for the first time and saw an unknown type of shock wave occur during the gory process. They also found that the dissipation of these shock waves powered an exceptionally intense flare during the event's brightest weeks.
