Supermassive black holes usually lurk unseen, but when an unlucky star drifts too close they ignite titanic outbursts brighter than 100 supernovae. By mixing NASA, ESA, and ground-based data, astronomers caught three of these rare “extreme nuclear transients,” including the cheekily named “Barbie,” watching dormant galactic cores binge on stars three-to-ten times the Sun’s mass […]