A high-energy particle, thought to have been sent our way by a supermassive black hole hundreds of millions of years ago, has collided with Earth and offered astronomers a rare insight into black holes. Supermassive black holes are behemoths hiding in the centers of galaxies. Their gravitational force is so strong that if an unlucky star gets too close to it, the star will be shredded into pieces. Astronomers call this a tidal disruption event. The black hole then swallows the remains of the star, temporarily giving off light, as the black hole is full of energy. Recently, a team of astronomers witnessed such a cosmic catastrophe. On April 9, 2019, the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) at Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, detected light emitted in a tidal disruption event. This event, dubbed AT2019dsg, occurred in a galaxy referred to as 2MASX J20570298+1412165, which is over 690 million …
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