Astronomers have witnessed a cosmic explosion that emitted as much energy as 400 billion suns. The event, which has been nicknamed "the Whippet," is a staggeringly powerful example of a Tidal Disruption Event (TDE) and is the result of a super-sized star being shredded and devoured by a black hole.
TDEs occur when stars wander too close to black holes. The immense gravity surrounding black holes generates strong tidal forces that simultaneously squash and stretch these stars, creating strands of "stellar spaghetti." This stellar pasta twists around the black hole like spaghetti around a fork, forming a swirling flow of gas and dust known as an accretion disk that gradually feeds the cosmic titan. However, black holes are messy eaters, and some of this ex-stellar matter is blasted out from around them in parallel jets.
