Watch a black hole fall into a star and then blow up

It’s the greatest cosmic murder mystery of the year: How did a black hole destroy a star—and what kind of black hole is the culprit?

Astronomers around the world have been on the case since July 2, when they received text messages alerting them that NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope had detected signals in gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light known. Gamma rays are a well-known signature of black holes destroying cosmic objects like stars . That’s because such events release a tremendous amount of energy.

Normally, so-called “gamma ray bursts,” sudden flashes of extremely energetic radiation from the cosmos, last somewhere between a second and half an hour on average. This burst persisted for seven hours, making it the longest gamma ray burst ever recorded.

Another str