Black Hole Sucks Down Star Stuff at 30 Percent Speed of Light

D-brief
By Alison Klesman
Sep 24, 2018 9:30 PMMay 21, 2019 5:45 PM
black hole eats star at 30 percent speed of light
This artist's concept shows a stream of material flowing toward a black hole as it tears apart and feeds on an unlucky star. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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After falling past the event horizon — the point of no return — nothing can escape a black hole. While the depths of black holes may forever remain a mystery, astronomers can observe the regions around them. In a paper published September 3 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a team of researchers reported, for the first time, spotting a clump of matter falling directly into a distant black hole at nearly one-third the speed of light.

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