New research suggests that three stars may have been completely destroyed by "supermassive black holes" in the centers of galaxies.
Scientists at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences studied data from ROSAT and XMM-Newton, two observatories that gathered information on black holes. ROSAT orbited from 1990 to 1999, until XMM-Newton took its place. Together, the satellites provided information about what the researchers speculate may be "the total destruction of stars" by black holes. The research is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society journal.
According to Phys.org, black holes can "fully absorb the captured matter of a destroyed star" in just a few years' time, and the satellites used X-ray data to detect at least three destroyed stars, using data collected in the 1990s and 2000s. In addition to the stars detected, new data has found that stars' destruction near black holes in the same galaxy happens roughly once every 30,000 years.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The researchers plan to debut the new observatory Spectrum-X-Gamma in 2016 to further examine the effects of "supermassive black holes" on their surroundings.
-
5 museum-grade cartoons about Trump's Smithsonian purgeCartoons Artists take on institutional rebranding, exhibit interpretation, and more
-
Settling the West Bank: a death knell for a Palestine state?In the Spotlight The reality on the ground is that the annexation of the West Bank is all but a done deal
-
Sudoku medium: August 23, 2025The Week's daily medium sudoku puzzle
-
Rabbits with 'horns' sighted across Coloradospeed read These creatures are infected with the 'mostly harmless' Shope papilloma virus
-
Lithium shows promise in Alzheimer's studySpeed Read Potential new treatments could use small amounts of the common metal
-
Scientists discover cause of massive sea star die-offSpeed Read A bacteria related to cholera has been found responsible for the deaths of more than 5 billion sea stars
-
'Thriving' ecosystem found 30,000 feet underseaSpeed Read Researchers discovered communities of creatures living in frigid, pitch-black waters under high pressure
-
New York plans first nuclear plant in 36 yearsSpeed Read The plant, to be constructed somewhere in upstate New York, will produce enough energy to power a million homes
-
Dehorning rhinos sharply cuts poaching, study findsSpeed Read The painless procedure may be an effective way to reduce the widespread poaching of rhinoceroses
-
Breakthrough gene-editing treatment saves babyspeed read KJ Muldoon was healed from a rare genetic condition
-
Sea lion proves animals can keep a beatspeed read A sea lion named Ronan beat a group of college students in a rhythmic dance-off, says new study
