In the center of galaxy J2344 five years ago, a black hole tore apart a star, and now scorching gas bubbles there — a cosmic “stew pot”. Every 12 hours, giant X-ray bubbles rise in it, and on their ascent, super-hot splashes lasting 5–30 minutes appear. At first, this strange double pulsation was dismissed as a detector glitch — but the rhythm held day after day.
The mechanism was unraveled by X-ray telescopes Einstein and XMM-Newton, confirming the ideas of Kip Thorne and Roger Penrose. The culprit is likely an invisible companion — a stellar remnant or a small black hole orbiting the central supermassive black hole. With each close approach, the companion shakes the disk, generating the main flare, and then, like a wake, a short micro-burst. Such systems are called extreme inspirals. Someday a gravitational-wave observatory will catch them — and we will hear space itself stretch and squeeze.
A star being ripped apart by a black hole is a once-in-10,000-to-100,000-year event for each large galaxy; catching one in real time happens once in an astronomer’s generation.