A disappearing disk of gas acts like a gravitational slingshot, hurling stars into black holes at rates far higher than anyone expected.
April 24, 2026
Original Paper
Enhancement of the Rate of Tidal Disruption Events in Active Galactic Nuclei due to the Sweeping Secular Resonance Mechanism
arXiv · 2604.18597
The Takeaway
Black holes at the center of galaxies shred passing stars in violent events called tidal disruptions. Current models predict these events should be rare, but we keep seeing them happen far too often. A newly identified mechanism shows that a thinning gas disk creates a resonance that pushes nearby stars off their stable paths. These stars are then funneled directly into the black hole maw like water down a drain. This suggests that galactic centers are hiding many more medium-sized black holes than we previously detected.
From the abstract
Tidal disruption event (TDE) rates in active galactic nuclei (AGN) consistently exceed predictions from two-body relaxation, particularly in post-starburst and green valley galaxies. We explain this excess with a new mechanism: a sweeping secular resonance (SSR) driven by an intermediate-mass companion (IMC) and a depleting gaseous disk. As the disk mass declines, a resonance between stellar and IMC orbital precession sweeps through the nuclear cluster, exciting stellar eccentricities to near un