Lixin Dai

When a star wanders too close to a black hole, an object with gravity so intense that not even light can escape, tidal forces shred it like dough caught in a mixer's beaters. This event, known as a tidal disruption event (TDE), unleashes a powerful flare of radiation.

A whirlpool gulps down water, but splashes most of it back out. That's roughly how a black hole behaves when too much matter falls onto it. In a new study, astrophysicists ran 32 computer simulations to understand how a black hole's parameters — mass, spin, and "appetite"—control these cosmic fountains.