Uncovering the Secrets of an Immortal Star in the Cosmos

Physicists have developed a model that explains the unexpected orbit of a star around a supermassive black hole, providing new insights into one of the cosmos’ most extreme environments. The team's findings describe the capture of the star by a supermassive black hole, the stripping of the material each time the star comes close to the black hole, and the delay between when the material is stripped and when it feeds the black hole again. The team is studying a tidal disruption event (TDE) known as AT2018fyk, which is the first to develop and use a detailed model of a repeating partial TDE to explain the observations, make predictions about the orbital properties of a star in a distant galaxy, and understand the partial tidal disruption process.