On 2 July 2025, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected a gamma-ray burst lasting over seven hours, nearly twice the duration of anything previously recorded. Not only was it the longest ever seen, it repeated, firing off multiple distinct bursts across an entire day. GRB 250702B, as it became known, doesn't fit any known category of astronomical explosion. But a new paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society offers the explanation that a star torn apart by an intermediate mass black hole may well be the culprit!On 2 July 2025, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected a gamma-ray burst lasting over seven hours, nearly twice the duration of anything previously recorded. Not only was it the longest ever seen, it repeated, firing off multiple distinct bursts across an entire day. GRB 250702B, as it became known, doesn't fit any known category of astronomical explosion. But a new paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society offers the explanation that a star torn apart by an intermediate mass black hole may well be the culprit!