NASA recently released an animation showing us what happens when a star comes too close to a black hole...

NASA recently released an animation showing us what happens when a star comes too close to a black hole. Jelle Kaastra, from the Institute for Space Research, explains that black holes rip stars to pieces and will begin to swallow them. The black hole actually won’t be able to keep up with the pace of destruction, unable to swallow the entire star and expelling material violently. This is known as a pulsar, the brightest thing ever discovered (refer to the image above).
These observations were based off a real event called ASASSN-41. In November 2014 and about 290 million light years away, researchers witnessed a star getting ripped apart. This event is called a tidal disruption. As mentioned above, some material from the star will be thrown back out into space, showing us that some things can escape black holes after all!
Check out this cool yet frightening animation!