Monster Black Hole Shreds Star

Who knew the band Soundgarden was being prescient—and scientifically accurate—when it wrote the song “Black Hole Sun”? Astronomers have reported in the journal Science that a monster black hole has gobbled up a star the size of the sun about four billion light years away. Joshua Bloom, an assistant professor at UC Berkeley and a co-author of the research, said the event produced an explosion of gamma rays that won’t be topped for another million years.