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The Ohio State Univerity reports:
COLUMBUS, Ohio: Astronomers have gotten the closest look yet at what happens when a black hole takes a bite out of a star—and the star lives to tell the tale.
We may think of black holes as swallowing entire stars—or any other object that wanders too close to their immense gravity. But sometimes, a star that is almost captured by a black hole escapes with only a portion of its mass torn off. Such was the case for a star some 650 million light years away toward Ursa Major, the constellation that contains the “Big Dipper”, where a supermassive black hole tore off a chunk of material from a star that got away.
Conventional wisdom suggests that black holes don’t consume whole stars all that often—maybe only once every 10,000-100,000 years, Kochanek said. But how often black holes tear off just a piece of a passing star is an open question.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by zeigerpuppy on Sunday October 26 2014, @05:02PM
A black hole is a star who tried to burn too bright, struck iron and found itself without the puff to keep its own mass away. In an instant it fell in upon itself, still massive but now hopelessly, infinitely dense. And in so doing takes on a new character as one of the most forceful processes in the universe. By its presence shocking and stirring the cosmic soup and bringing new stars to life.
As they fly past, they are drawn to her like any other mass but with some luck can sail past without entering her spirally, death dance.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday October 26 2014, @08:19PM
You didn't address his point (though earlier posters did).
If it is a black hole, then it has an event horizon. If something crosses the event horizon, it will not escape, except as Hawking radiation. But stars are not point masses. It's quite feasible for part of a star to cross the event horizon, and the rest not to. This will, in fact, increase the velocity of the star away from the black hole. (The star was following an orbit determined by the centroid of mass. The part that was moving slowest relative to the black hole would be the part nearest to the event horizon. Remove that and the new centroid of mass is now directed further away from the black hole.)
P.S.: I have my doubts about any calculations involving infinite density. You might want to rethink that part.
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