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hue

(4,949 posts)
Tue Apr 9, 2013, 07:34 PM Apr 2013

Black Hole Caught Snacking on 'Super Jupiter' Planet

http://www.space.com/20580-black-hole-eats-giant-planet.html

In a cosmic first, astronomers have discovered a black hole chowing down on what may be a giant rogue planet.

The supermassive black hole didn't finish off its meal, which scientists say was either a huge Jupiter-like planet wandering freely through space or a brown dwarf, a strange object that's larger than a planet yet still too small to trigger the internal fusion reactions required to become a full-fledged star.

“This is the first time where we have seen the disruption of a substellar object by a black hole," study co-author Roland Walter, of the Observatory of Geneva in Switzerland, said in a statement. "We estimate that only its external layers were eaten by the black hole, amounting to about 10 percent of the object’s total mass, and that a denser core has been left orbiting the black hole."
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Black Hole Caught Snacking on 'Super Jupiter' Planet (Original Post) hue Apr 2013 OP
ttiuwop n/t yodermon Apr 2013 #1
That black hole is going to have serious gas mindwalker_i Apr 2013 #2
ROFL! You win this thread. nt longship Apr 2013 #3

mindwalker_i

(4,407 posts)
2. That black hole is going to have serious gas
Tue Apr 9, 2013, 08:55 PM
Apr 2013

Now, taxpayers will be on the hook for 5.3 * 10^8 gallons of Pepto Bismol.

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