A team of physicists devises a model that maps a star's surprising orbit about a supermassive black hole. When a star passes within a certain distance of a black hole - close enough to be gravitationally disrupted - the stellar material gets stretched and compressed as it falls into the black hole.
thecollege.syr.eduSubmitted by MistWeaver80 t3_10b69qn in science
NIRPL t1_j48p2dy wrote
I'm genuinely curious. Why is this phenomenon not obvious? Wouldn't it be expected to see the materials "stretch" as they are pulled away and then compress as they get closer to the gravity of the black hole?
Or is the compression weird, as in the material should have stayed in the stretched state and not compress at all? Maybe this is a situation where researchers never had the tools to prove their theory until now?
I hope my questions made enough sense to get some solid feedback