Star Swallowing Black Holes

Via radio signals, scientists have detected a black hole swallowing a star similar to our sun.  A team of astrophysicists, led by a Johns Hopkins University scientist, were able to witness destruction, which led to the ejection of a flare of matter that moved close to the speed of light.
Sjoert van Velzen, a Hubble fellow at Johns Hopkins, stated:

These events are extremely rare...It's the first time we see everything from the stellar destruction followed by the launch of a conical outflow, also called a jet, and we watched it unfold over several months.

We have seen this before. Years back NASA's Swift satellite discovered evidence of a neutron star being swallowed by a black hole back in 2005.  It is not the same thing as watching a sun like our own being pulled apart, but it similarly demonstrates the danger of a star's proximity to the sun.

And below is an image from a few years ago showing a flare from a star being destroyed at a galaxy's center by a black hole.  As the NASA site noted:

These images, taken with NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer and the Pan-STARRS1 telescope in Hawaii, show a brightening inside a galaxy caused by a flare from its nucleus. The arrow in each image points to the galaxy. The flare is a signature of the galaxy's central black hole shredding a star that wandered too close.

Yes, the universe can be a violent place.

Viewing New Horizons

We are off to a great start as we head towards the last planet in the solar system! The 3 billion mile trip to Pluto began yesterday and now we have a show that will last at least 9.5 years. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft broke away from Earth's and will someday visit Pluto and then break away from the inner solar system and inspect the Kuiper Belt - a cold and ice filled region from which planetoids periodically appear. You can monitor this little craft by visiting the Johns Hopkins University site.

Note: This if the first entry of Mars or Bust...a site designed to keep you wondering about this amazing world. Be it Pluto, Mars, the Milky Way or the Big Bang itself, the investigation is just beginning.