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# The New Physics of Black Hole Star Capture | Extreme Tidal Disruption Events
- URL: https://www.cascadepbs.org/show/pbs-space-time/episode/the-new-physics-of-black-hole-star-capture-extreme-tidal-disruption-events-u4pfby/
- Published: 2024-10-07T20:16:04.000Z
- Updated: 2025-08-21T13:47:09.000Z
- Description: We’ve never seen a TDE in the Milky Way, but we’ve seen them in distant galaxies.
- Author: Cascade PBS Staff
- Tags: PBS Space Time, Season 10, Episode 21, #ZZZ_Episode_f7dfd7c9-a83e-4267-ab83-47c871298996, #episode, #ZZZ_Show_ae70f836-13b6-4c9d-b61f-99f7b8bc29eb, #v1.16

If you track the motion of individual stars in the ultra-dense star cluster at the very center of the Milky Way you’ll see that they swing in sharp orbits around some vast but invisible mass—that’s the Sagittarius A\* supermassive black hole. These are perilous orbits, and sometimes a star wanders just a little too close to that lurking monster, leading to a tidal disruption event.