Astronomers may have witnessed a star torn apart by a black hole

On March 28, 2011, NASA's Swift satellite caught a flash of high-energy X-rays pouring in from deep space. Swift is designed to do this, and since its launch in 2004 has seen hundreds of such things, usually caused by stars exploding at the ends of their lives. But this time was hardly "usual". It didn't see a star exploding as a supernova, it saw a star literally getting torn apart as it fell too close to a black hole!