Three years after a black hole shredded and devoured a small star, the cosmic titan is lighting up the night sky with violent emissions as it burps out material from its messy stellar meal. In October 2018 the black hole, located in a galaxy 665 million light years from Earth, was observed tearing up a star that had wandered too close. The event itself wasn’t surprising to astronomers, who often observe these violent encounters between stars and greedy black holes. These so-called tidal disruption events (TDEs) happen
