Neutron stars are the compressed cores of dead stars — city-sized objects with staggering density. Some of these stars become pulsars, cosmic lighthouses emitting strictly periodic radiation pulses.
At the edge of the solar system, far beyond Neptune's orbit, something is knocking icy chunks off their paths. Their orbits are stretched and tilted in the same way, as if an invisible hand arranged them in a pattern.
A black hole is not a vacuum cleaner. By itself, it doesn't pull everything in more strongly than an ordinary star of the same mass. But if there's a magnetic field nearby and charged particles flying around, an interesting game begins.