THE DEATH OF A STAR: 1) Tidal disruption events begin with a star orbiting a supermassive black hole at the heart of a galaxy. If it makes a close encounter with another star, it can be thrown into a death plunge towards the black hole. 2) As the star nears the black hole, tidal forces begin to grow, distorting the star — the process of spaghettification. 3) Eventually, the tidal forces become stronger than the star’s self-gravity, ripping the star apart. Some of the disassembled stellar material forms an accretion disk around the black hole, and some of it is flung into space. 4) As matter swirls around the black hole, magnetic fields focus some of the material into a powerful jet, whose particles travel at close to the speed of light. This creates shock waves inside the jet that produce intense beams of X-rays and radio waves.