Black Hole eats star and spits out remains 3 years later

I think there's more to the story than this...appearances are not necessarily actual reality, that's especially true in deep space....

I saw the headline at least a couple of times, but didn't read much of the details. Do they have proof that the current ejecta is in fact material from the star destroyed 3 years ago?

Indigestion?

The gravitational time dilation effects from the regions around any black hole would be awesome. I expect a perceived time difference between the consumption and ejection of matter by an external observer would be common. Because of this varying time difference, one can never be certain if the material of the observed ejecta is from the most recent consumption.

I've done NO calculations regarding this matter, but in order for the original object to be a black hole and attract and spaghettify the star, its mass must have been many times the mass of the star. At the time of the spaghettification, the mass of the star will already have been contributing to the total mass of the region, and therefore to the gravitational lensing and time dilation of the region.

The mass will presumably be more compact after spaghettification, so the lensing and time dilation effects of the region will presumably be greater, but only by a factor depending on the relative masses and space occupied by the two masses.

The time dilation due to that black hole and the consumed star will only occur while the light, visible or other, is still relatively near the pair. I find it difficult to believe that could cause a three-year delay.

Good idea. There might be time dilation from both the gravity field and the high velocity (0.5 c).

Maybe it was a movie star that was ejected..happens all the time in Hollywood.

Seriously,I would think that anything ejected by a black hole after being inside for 3 years would be totally homogenized,uniform, and indistinguishable from any other ejecta.No way to prove it's origin.Surely sounds like the Harvard students are getting bored.

Could be a twisty timey thing...Gee you've been gone for three years, what happened?....Seems like only a few seconds ago to me...

Maybe there's a worm hole connecting two black holes that switch from black to white hole when one eats a star...and that ejecta is from another black hole eating another star someplace, somewhere. some when.....

Instead of a black hole or white hole, it's a grey hole....

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6382/aae1df