Artist's illustration of a star (in the foreground) experiencing spaghettification as it’s sucked in by a supermassive black hole (in the background) (Credit: ESO.M. Kornmesser) s

Stars that get too close to black holes usually end up getting sucked in by the strong gravitational forces of the dense space objects, from which no light can escape. Now, for the first time, researchers have been able to observe the cosmic phenomenon — nicknamed "spaghettification" because it pulls apart a star into thin "spaghetti-like" strands — in real-time.