Black holes are often seen as cosmic monsters that swallow anything unlucky enough to stray too close. But new research suggests they do not always win — some stars can skim the Milky Way's central black hole, Sagittarius A*; lose mass; and stagger away. Scarred but alive, these survivors shine brighter than before, leaving clues that astronomers are only now learning to read.
"Just as the moon pulls tides on Earth, a black hole tugs on a star with far greater force," Rewa Clark Bush, a doctoral candidate in astronomy at Yale University and lead author of the study, told Live Science in an email. Push too far, and the star unravels. Yet some withstand the strain. "One of the stars we modeled lost over 60 percent of its envelope but still retained enough core material that it survived and escaped," Bush said.
