Black hole recorded eating star and then spitting parts back out

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In October 2018, the black hole — located in a galaxy 665 million light-years from Earth — was observed tearing up a star that had wandered too close. The event itself wasn't surprising to astronomers, who often observe these violent encounters between stars and greedy black holes. These so-called tidal disruption events (TDEs) happen when objects such as stars approach black holes and the massive gravitational influence they encounter generates tidal forces that stretch the star in one direction while squashing it in the other direction, thus "spaghettifying" the stellar body.

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However, there's something unusual about this TDE, designated AT2018hyz: Despite not having feasted on anything since this small star, which has about one-tenth the mass of the sun?, the black hole is now spewing the material from its last meal.

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Cendes and her team determined that this material is being ejected from the black hole at around 300 million mph (480 million kph) — about half the speed of light.

For comparison, TDEs usually spit out this material at about 10% the speed of light. Why it took so long for this black hole to burp out its last meal is also a mystery.

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