Black holes not only destroy stars, they have the power to reignite them

ScienceAlert: Black holes are famous for tearing apart and devouring stars. But new simulations suggest that, in the very final moments, black holes can actually bring stars back to life.But only certain stars, in certain conditions – and the perfect storm involved could help solve a perplexing black hole mystery.
So, how is this possible? If a white dwarf – or indeed any star – ventures too close to a black hole, it’s kaput. But what happens next is one of the most violent processes in the Universe.
The incredibly immense gravitational pull of the black hole – what we call its tidal force, the same force that the Moon exerts to cause the ocean tides (only on a much larger scale) – will tear the star apart, and devour, or accrete, the remains.But if the star is a white dwarf, the evolutionary endpoint of low- to middle-mass stars like our Sun, something interesting can happen.
In these white dwarves, hydrogen fusion has already come to a halt before they get gobbled up.But as the black hole’s tidal forces simultaneously stretch and compress the star in opposing directions in what is called a tidal disruption event, the compression can actually reignite fusion in the star’s core, even if just for a few seconds, according to new simulations.
The destroyer of worlds instead feeds the spark of life.There’s a big catch, though: this can only happen if it’s an intermediate mass black hole. And for some reason, those seem to be missing from the Universe.