Supernova Fail: Giant Dying Star Collapses Straight into Black Hole

[Judi Lynn]

By Elizabeth Howell, Space.com Contributor | May 26, 2017 12:50pm ET


It appears the path to becoming a black hole is more complex than astronomers thought. Rather than exploding into a supernova before collapsing into a black hole, as expected, one giant star skipped the pyrotechnics and went straight to the collapse.

This so-called "massive fail," spotted in a nearby galaxy, could explain why so few massive stars have been observed going supernova, researchers conducting a new study explained. As many as 30 percent of these massive stars may instead quietly collapse into a black hole.

"The typical view is that a star can form a black hole only after it goes supernova," Christopher Kochanek, co-author on the paper and an astronomer at Ohio State University, said in a statement. "If a star can fall short of a supernova and still make a black hole, that would help to explain why we don't see supernovae from the most massive stars." [The Strangest Black Holes in the Universe]

The dying star was about 25 times as massive as Earth's sun and located in NGC 6946, a spiral galaxy 22 million light-years from Earth. (Astronomers nickname this galaxy the "Fireworks Galaxy" because so many supernovas happen there, including recently discovered SN 2017eaw.)

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