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When A City-Size Star Becomes A Black Hole's Lunch, The Universe Roils

An artistic image of what happens when a monstrous black hole collides with — and gulps down — a neutron star the size of a large city. Carl Knox/OzGrav/Swinburne hide caption

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Carl Knox/OzGrav/Swinburne

Science

When A City-Size Star Becomes A Black Hole's Lunch, The Universe Roils

It's a smackdown of one space monster by another: Scientists have made unprecedented observations of two black holes gobbling two neutron stars — among the weirdest space collisions ever detected.

When A City-Size Star Becomes A Black Hole's Lunch, The Universe Roils

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Black Holes: Where Reality Beats Fiction

Astronomers have discovered a star, shown in an artist's rendition, that appears to be orbiting an invisible black hole with about four times the mass of the sun. L. Calçada/ESO hide caption

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L. Calçada/ESO

13.7: Cosmos And Culture

Black Holes: Where Reality Beats Fiction

We know that at the heart of pretty much every galaxy, there is a giant black hole. There is a lot that we know about black holes — and a lot that we don't know, says astrophysicist Marcelo Gleiser.

A New Era For Astronomy Has Begun

David Reitze of the California Institute of Technology and the executive director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, speaks at the National Press Club in Washington on Oct. 16. He talks of one of the most violent events in the cosmos, the collision of neuron stars, that was witnessed completely for the first time in August. Susan Walsh/AP hide caption

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Susan Walsh/AP

13.7: Cosmos And Culture

A New Era For Astronomy Has Begun

Astronomy is forever changed by the viewing of the collision of neutron stars; we can now watch these processes in many different ways as they run their course, says astrophysicist Marcelo Gleiser.

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