Decades-old X-ray mystery solved: star's 'death scream' from dual black hole attack

Three billion years ago, in the turbulent heart of a young galaxy, a star met its end between two supermassive black holes — and the light from that destruction has only now been fully understood. Since 1999, astronomers watching a faint X-ray signal called XID 925 fade into near-silence could not explain a sudden, violent brightening that lasted mere months before vanishing. A new study proposes that the star was first torn apart by one black hole, then struck again when a second plowed through the resulting debris disk, releasing a furious burst of energy. If confirmed, this reading of ancie