For the first time ever, astronomers have witnessed the black hole at the center of a galaxy roaring to life in real time — and they're not sure why it happened.
"Imagine you've been observing a distant galaxy for years, and it always seemed calm and inactive," study lead author Paula Sánchez Sáez, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory in Germany, said in a statement."Suddenly, its starts showing dramatic changes in brightness, unlike any typical events we've seen before."
This is because superheated, glowing matter that's been stripped from planets, stars, gas, dust and other black holes can swirl around the entrance to the monster's jaws at close to the speed of light. Once the plasma plunges over the black hole's precipice, or event horizon, it is lost inside forever.