
Astronomers detect "Scary Barbie" supermassive black hole ripping apart huge star in "terrifying" spaghettification event
CBSN
Astronomers have detected an impressive supermassive black hole devouring a star – and they've nicknamed it "Scary Barbie," in part because of its terrifying power. Scientists called it one of the "most luminous, energetic, long-lasting transient objects" found lurking in a forgotten corner of the night sky.
Bhagya Subrayan, a Purdue University graduate student, said researchers believe the black hole "pulled in a star and ripped it apart," in a brutal process called "spaghettification." The object, documented in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, was assigned a random designation, ZTF20abrbeie, leading to the creation of its trendy nickname.
While the "outlier" death event lay undetected for years among other telescopic data, a Purdue lab's artificial intelligence engine — the Recommender Engine For Intelligent Transient Tracking (REFITT) — helped uncover the "terrifying" anomaly.

It's an evocative idea that has long bedeviled scientists: a huge and mysterious planet is lurking in the darkness at the edge of our solar system, evading all our efforts to spot it. Some astronomers say the strange, clustered orbits of icy rocks beyond Neptune indicate that something big is out there, which they have dubbed "Planet Nine."