Black Holes have the reputation of the bad boys of outer space. Nothing phases them, they simply swallow their challengers as soon as the challenger comes close enough. However recent evidence suggests that they may not have quite the digestion we believe them to have.

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been conducting a science project on a super massive black hole in a galaxy almost 300 million light years away from Earth. They have identified “tidal disruption flare” with a curious pattern in the energy emitted by the flare. It was seen in the Ultra Violet range of the electromagnetic spectrum associated with the black hole.

This pattern was repeated 32 days later, but this time it was in the X-ray band of the electromagnetic spectrum. The MIT observations were confirmed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center telescope as well. They believe that the energy echos are due to  a star being quickly ripper apart by the black hole.

Dheeraj Pasham said that this black hole has not had much to feed on for a while, and suddenly along comes an unlucky star full of matter. What is being seen is that  this stellar material is not just continuously being fed onto the black hole, but it’s interacting with itself — stopping and going, stopping and going. This is telling us that the black hole is ‘choking’ on this sudden supply of stellar debris.