So, you’re a black hole. You’ve just sucked down a tasty, tasty star. Unfortunately, you may have just given yourself some indigestion that can only be gotten rid of with a belch of radiation.
At least that’s the latest theory about gamma rays and cosmic rays.
The culprit was most likely a star falling into a galaxy’s central black hole. This would make a weak black hole flare up, producing a burst of gamma rays that in turn spits out cosmic rays, suggests Farrar.
This may solve the mystery of where the hell these rays actually come from, since every idea astronomers have had has come up dry. It’s important to solve since, well, we have no idea where these things come from and it would be nice to know that in case they ever try to kill us.
In other words, the Hulk was created by the side effect of black holes getting some gas. Suddenly his origin doesn’t seem nearly so bad-ass.
image courtesy NASA