For the first time, the James Webb Space Telescope has observed several tidal disruption events — when a black hole draws in a nearby star and tears it to shreds. Surprisingly, these are not active black holes, but rather dormant ones that briefly “wake up” to feast on a passing star.
Yeah, absolutely a rolling ball effect. It’s probably a difficult process to kick-off as the immediate surrounding space of an inactive black hole is going to be super super empty. (Any small stuff nearby would just get monched with no trace.)
Once the process starts though…