Supermassive black holes occasionally tear apart and consume wandering stars in a violent process called a tidal disruption event, but they do not always swallow their cosmic meals cleanly.

A closer look

Supermassive black holes occasionally tear apart and consume wandering stars in a violent process called a tidal disruption event, but they do not always swallow their cosmic meals cleanly. Sometimes, the gravitational forces become so chaotic that the black hole suffers the cosmic equivalent of indigestion, violently ejecting massive jets of stellar material back out into deep space at close to the speed of light. Watching a supposedly inescapable void of infinite gravity gorge itself on a star, only to loudly regurgitate half the plasma across the galaxy, is both terrifying and deeply relatable. Even the most destructive, mysterious objects in the known universe lack basic table manners and occasionally bite off more than they can safely chew. It is somewhat reassuring to know that the fundamental laws of astrophysics allow a supermassive singularity to experience the exact same post-buffet regret as a human who ate far too many spicy wings on a Friday night