Cosmic gulp: Astronomers see black hole swallow neutron star

Astronomers say they’ve witnessed for the first time a black hole swallowing a neutron star, the densest object in the universe. A study by more than 100 scientists published Tuesday described collisions observed in January 2020 so violent that they generated as much energy as all the visible light in the observable universe. That energy was detected on Earth as gravitational waves, ripples of energy first theorized by Albert Einstein. While astronomers had observed two black holes colliding with each other and two neutron stars colliding with each other, this is the first time they saw one of each crashing together.