Ning Jiang

The flare AT2018cqh in a dwarf galaxy turned out to be the trail of a star torn apart by a middleweight black hole. These objects are the missing link between tiny and giant black holes, and they are extremely hard to find. This discovery offers a new way to hunt for the invisible.

A single neutrino, caught by an Antarctic telescope, coincided with a flare from a star being torn apart by a black hole. The discovery showed that such catastrophes give birth to ghost particles. Now we know one of the sources of cosmic neutrinos.

Astronomers cracked the flare pattern of a distant galaxy. A tiny orbiting object repeatedly punches through a gas cloud — the remains of a torn-apart star. The cloud is bent, so some bursts shine brighter, others dimmer. This on-off rhythm unveils the central black hole's spin. In a few decades, th