Black Hole Seen Ripping Star Apart

[windansea]

This an artist's Illustration of the RX J1242-11 system depicting how the catastrophic destruction of a star that wandered too close to a supermassive black hole may have occurred. A close encounter with another star put the doomed star (orange circle) on a path that took it near a supermassive black hole. The enormous gravity of the giant black hole stretched the star until it was torn apart. Because of the momentum and energy of the accretion process, only a few percent of the disrupted star's mass (indicated by the white stream) was swallowed by the black hole, while the rest of was flung away into the surrounding galaxy. (AP Photo/Credit: Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss)

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040218/D80PREA80.html

[JitterbugPerfume]

1. wow ---

that is a cool picture! Fascinating

[Ripley]

2. Terrifying!

I hope our star doesn't "wander into the wrong neighborhood." Yikes!

[demnan]

3. Wow!

I guess the whole universe was reacting to Dean's departure.

[silver state d]

4. Super freaking cool

Star = B*sh; Hole = scap heap of history

[DrWeird]

5. Not a terribly good illustration, is it?

Black holes are a few miles in diameter. This thing's bigger than the star.

[Teaser]

8. Could be a supermassive black hole

...like the ones purported to be at galactic centers...

But I'm to lazy to read the article, so I guess I'll never know.

[damnraddem]

6. Caught it red-handed ...

err, gravitationed?

[AngryAmish]

7. I did not do that

I swear to god

[mike1963]

9. Ack. Thought your title meant Babs Bush was attacking Martin Sheen!

:D

[dArKeR]

10. Seems funny that BH has the force to rip the star apart but lets it escape

all but a few percent.

[ozone_man]

11. Yes, very interesting.

A gravitational tug of war. Probably stripped some from the outer layer (coronasphere?).

[SinkingInTheRain]

12. The escaped fraction was due to acceleration of mass

The mass that escaped was moving too fast to be engulfed and therefore was slingshot into the void.

[Jacobin]

13. Damn, sounds like my last date.

:-)

[mouse7]

14. Thought that was shreding of guy who tried to stop DU cat threads

The guy who wanted the cat threads in the DU lounge stopped got ripped up pretty bad. Are you sure it's just a black hole ripping apart a star? That's so much less violent than what happened to the cat-hater in the lounge.

[AlFrankenFan]

15. Terrifyingly beautiful

Wow.