Black hole is caught tearing a star apart

From Times Staff and Wire Reports
December 9, 2006

"A giant black hole has been spotted guzzling a star in a galaxy 4 billion light-years away in the Bootes constellation, according to scientists using the Galaxy Evolution Explorer orbiting telescope. "Only once every 10,000 years will a star pass close enough to a [galaxy's] central black hole to be ripped apart and swallowed in this manner," said Suvi Gezari of Caltech, lead author of the paper in the Dec. 10 Astrophysical Journal Letters."

What a wonderful story. It starts: Once upon a time... 4 billion light-years away!

Roll that around in your puny little earthling brain. A miraculous, space-floating, GEE telescope is enabling some of us to gaze at least 4 billion light-years away -- not mention how far into the past that must be. How clever is that! God seems to be alive and well at Caltech.

Who else could have enlightened Suvi Gezari that the neolithic era of Stoners were the last known humans to note that same astral phenomenon some 10,000 years ago.

This is how Biblical type fantasies are woven. A vicious black hole guzzling, ripping apart and swallowing a twinkling little star that just happened to be passing by. How can you not believe in a Greater Power? Or Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf.

Get ready for the wonderful new theologies and fairy tales the high priests of astronomy will bring us in the new millenium.