Cosmic Gamma-Ray Bursts from Black Hole Tidal Disruption of Stars?

Prior to its ultimate tidal disruption, any star plunging sufficiently deeply within the Roche radius of a giant black hole in a galactic nucleus will briefly undergo compression into highly flattened pancake configuration in the plane of its orbit. If it is assumed (as a provisional hypothesis) that a substantial part of the thermal energy briefly made available by this process is dissipated as electromagnetic radiation, one finds that the most energetic cases would give rise to cosmic gamma-ray bursts whose total energy and duration are remarkably consistent with what is actually observed