Stars can be slowly shredded by a black hole even if they never get close enough for its gravity to pull them apart directly.
March 31, 2026
Original Paper
Irregular Repeating Tidal Disruption Events due to Diffusive Tides
arXiv · 2603.27132
The Takeaway
Usually, a star has to cross a specific 'danger zone' to be destroyed by a black hole. This study shows that a star orbiting further away can still be shaken to death because it absorbs energy from the black hole over time, like a glass shattering from a specific musical note.
From the abstract
A repeating partial tidal disruption event (rpTDE) is typically modelled as a star in a bounded orbit getting disrupted by a massive black hole at each pericenter passage. For the disruption to occur, the pericenter distance should be close to or within the characteristic tidal radius, such that the tidal field can overcome the star's binding force to trigger mass loss. However, a binary with a pericenter distance several times the tidal radius can build up its tidal perturbation over multiple o