Astronomers have spotted a tiny star being gobbled up by a black hole in one of the biggest explosions ever witnessed in the universe.
The blast lasted only a few milliseconds before the star’s dying screams were snuffed out by the cosmic cannibal in a single gulp.
But the violent scene in a distant galaxy was witnessed by instruments aboard Nasa’s Swift and Chandra satellites as they were bombarded with gamma rays from the event.
A black hole is an object so massive and dense that even light cannot escape its gravitational pull.
Scientists believe its victim was a neutron star – a star so dense that just a thimbleful of its matter weighs billions of tons.
It had been orbiting the black hole for billions of years.
The explosion, in a galaxy 3,000 million light years away, is revealed in the science journal Nature this week.
Professsor Peter Meszaros of Penn State University, Pennsylvania, said: “There’s only one thing I know of that could rip apart a neutron star with bits flying out, and that’s a black hole.”