Now, a surprising discovery expands our understanding of black holes, the objects they can host, and how they form.

In a study appearing today in Nature, physicists at MIT and Caltech report that they have observed a “black hole triple” for the first time.

The new system holds a central black hole in the act of consuming a small star spiraling in very close to the black hole every 6.5 days — a configuration similar to most binary systems.