They've now determined that the most likely source of that signal is a supermassive black hole gobbling up a star in a "hyper-feeding frenzy," shooting out jets of matter in what's known as a tidal disruption event (TDE).

The authors estimate the jet from this TDE is traveling at 99.99 percent the speed of light, meaning the black hole is really chowing down on its stellar repast.

If that object is a star, the process of being shredded (or "spaghettified") by the powerful gravitational forces of a black hole occurs outside the event horizon, and part of the star's original mass is ejected violently outward.

This, in turn, can form a rotating ring of matter (aka an accretion disk) around the black hole that emits powerful X-rays and visible light—and sometimes radio waves.

For instance, in 2018, astronomers announced the first direct image of the aftermath of a star being shredded by a black hole 20 million times more massive than our Sun in a pair of colliding galaxies called Arp 299, about 150 million light-years from Earth.

A year later, astronomers recorded the final death throes of a star being shredded by a supermassive black hole, dubbed AT 2019qiz, which provided the first direct evidence that outflowing gas during disruption and accretion produces the powerful optical and radio emissions previously observed.

Given the brightness of AT 2022cmc and its longer duration, astronomers concluded it must be powered by a supermassive black hole.

The X-ray data also pointed to an "extreme accretion episode." That's when a whirlpool of debris forms as the unfortunate star falls into the black hole.