Black Hole Wakes Up and Has a Light Snack

EU–(ENEWSPF)–2 April 2013.  Astronomers have watched as a black hole woke up from a decades-long slumber to feed on a low-mass object – either a brown dwarf or a giant planet – that strayed too close. A similar feeding event, albeit on a gas cloud, will soon happen at the black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way Galaxy.

The discovery in galaxy NGC 4845, 47 million light-years away, was made by ESA’s…