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RandomFactor [soylentnews.org] writes:

This past Wednesday (and about 900 million years ago), for the first time according to scientists at Australian National University (ANU) gravitational-wave discovery machines detected a black hole swallowing a neutron star [phys.org]

Professor Susan Scott, from the ANU Research School of Physics, said the achievement completed the team's trifecta of observations on their original wish list, which included the merger of two black holes and the collision of two neutron stars.

"About 900 million years ago, this black hole ate a very dense star, known as a neutron star, like Pac-man—possibly snuffing out the star instantly," said Professor Scott, Leader of the General Relativity Theory and Data Analysis Group at ANU and a Chief Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav).

Professor Scott notes that there is an alternative, but unlikely, possibility as well

there is the slight but intriguing possibility that the swallowed object was a very light black hole—much lighter than any other black hole we know about in the Universe. That would be a truly awesome consolation prize.

The ANU SkyMapper Telescope responded to the detection alert and scanned the entire likely region of space where the event occurred, but we've not found any visual confirmation.

The scientists continue to analyze the data and search for the event in the sky and expect to publish the final results once complete.

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