Credit: Carl Knox (OzGrav, ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery, Swinburne University of Technology)
University of Minnesota Twin Cities Assistant Professor Michael Coughlin is co-leading a team that discovered a bright optical flare which may help researchers better understand the physics of supermassive black holes billions of light years away. The above image shows a star being ripped apart by a black hole, or what scientists call a tidal disruption event.