Scientists Catch A Black Hole Chowing Down On A “Super Planet”

Astronomers have discovered a “rogue planet” being eaten by a black hole. Either that, or Galactus got hungry.

The supermassive black hole didn’t quite finish chowing down on it’s interstellar snack, either a huge Jupiter-like planet or a not-quite-yet-a-planet brown dwarf.

“This is the first time where we have seen the disruption of a substellar object by a black hole,” study co-author Roland Walter, of the Observatory of Geneva in Switzerland, said in a statement. “We estimate that only its external layers were eaten by the black hole, amounting to about 10 percent of the object’s total mass, and that a denser core has been left orbiting the black hole.”

This kind of phenomenon is fascinating, and it is amazing that they can capture images of this. 

~Ophelia