On 2 July, 2025, the China-led Einstein Probe (EP) space telescope detected an exceptionally bright X-ray source whose brightness varied rapidly during a routine sky survey. Its unusual signal immediately set it apart from ordinary cosmic sources, triggering rapid follow-up observations by telescopes worldwide.

This research was coordinated by the EP Science Center of the National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), with participation from multiple research institutions in China and abroad. Astrophysicists from the Department of Physics at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), who are integral members of the EP scientific team, worked together with the broader collaboration to interpret the event, proposing that it may mark the moment when an intermediate-mass black hole tears apart and consumes a white dwarf star. If confirmed, this would be the first observational evidence of such an extreme black hole “feeding” process. The findings have been published as a cover article in Science Bulletin.

A global team of astronomers, led by the University of Warwick, have used a European Space Agency (ESA) telescope to discover a planetary system that turns our understanding of planet formation upside down, with a distant rocky world