From- Sky &Telescope By - Monica Young Edited by - Amal Udawatta This artist’s illustration shows a disk of material (red, orange, and yellow) created after a supermassive black hole (depicted on the right) destroyed a star through intense tidal forces. After a few years, this disk expanded outward until it began intersecting another orbiting object — either a star or a small black hole — around the giant black hole. NASA / CXC / SAO and Soheb Mandhai / The Astro Phoenix In 2019 a supermassive black hole ate a star. It’s incredible that such an incredible event is now commonplace — not in individual galaxies, where such stellar meals happen only every 10,000 to 100,000 years, but in our telescopes, through which astronomers can monitor millions of galaxies to observe their feeding habits. The crumbs of a supermassive black hole’s stellar meal has revealed the presence of a second star in a close orbit. But in the course of studying this particular stellar feast, Mat
From - BBC World News By- Jasmin Fox-Skelly Edited by - Amal Udawatta Getty Images Constructed over 1,200 years ago, the imposing 65m-tall (213ft) Temple IV at Tikal, in modern Guatemala, is a testament to ancient Maya masonry (Credit: Getty Images) Ruins of ancient cities keep turning up in the forests of central America. How have these structures remained standing for millennia despite tropical rains, hurricanes and the return of the jungle? Anyone driving down the rough asphalt of highway 269 that bisects the Yucatán peninsula in southeast Mexico would never have known it was there. Thick jungle lines both sides of the road for much of its length, with the occasional patch cleared for livestock. Yet, after an innocuous bend in the road, close to the tiny settlement of Dos Lagunas, an entire city has been hiding. Concealed beneath a tangle of trees, vines and other vegetation, scientists have discovered a sprawling collection of houses , plazas, temple pyramids and e