NASA's Swift records supermassive black hole ripping star 30,000 light-years
NASA's Swift Observatory just caught a supermassive black hole ripping apart a star, something called a tidal disruption event (TDE).
What's wild is, this happened over 30,000 light-years from the center of its galaxy, the farthest out scientists have ever seen one of these.
The findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Zwicky AI flagged bright ultraviolet flare
The TDE was first picked up in November 2025 by AI at the Zwicky Transient Facility, which noticed an ultraviolet flare brighter than 10 billion suns.
After checking all possibilities, researchers confirmed it was a TDE with help from Swift, which measured its scorching temperature at about 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Such events are extremely rare, usually happening only about once every 100,000 years in a galaxy.
This discovery could help scientists find more hidden black holes wandering far from galactic centers and rethink how common they really are.