About 3 billion years ago, a hapless star got caught in a twisted tug-of-war between two gigantic black holes — and now, we are seeing the faint screams of X-rays emanating from this violent event. If confirmed, it could be the most distant episode of two black holes attacking a star ever seen.

An international team of astronomers reported their decades-long observation of the faintest known variable X-ray flare in a paper accepted for publication in the journal The Innovation in November.

The X-ray source, named XID 925, was first spotted in 1999 within the Chandra X-ray Observatory’s Deep Field South survey, the deepest and most complete X-ray survey ever taken. Since then, astronomers have kept a close eye on it, watching as what was initially a bright pinprick of radiation fell dimmer and dimmer, reaching just a paltry one-fortieth of its initially observed peak.