'Pac-Man' in space: Black holes gobble up neutron stars in first evidence of a rare celestial event

For the first time, astronomers have evidence of gravitational waves that were created when black holes devoured dense neutron stars. The gravitational waves were created nearly a billion years ago, but just reached Earth in January 2020.

For the first time ever, astronomers have detected two separate instances of black holes swallowing dense neutron stars -- and it played out like Pac-Man in space. The gravitational waves caused by these two events reached Earth in January 2020, allowing astronomers to retrace the ripples in space-time back to when they occurred in distant galaxies 900 million light-years and a billion light-years away.