Why the death of this star is very, very strange [View all]

[Zorro]

This particular supernova was unusual for several reasons.

Scientists may have figured out what caused one of the strangest explosions ever observed in our universe: A massive star exploded while getting ripped apart by a black hole. Astronomers identified this blast as a new flavor of supernova, the powerful bursts that mark the end of a star’s life.

The blast — which occurred about 730 million light-years from Earth — was first spotted in July 2023 with the help of a new artificial intelligence algorithm, which scans the cosmos for unusual explosions in real time. When scientists further studied the event, they concluded an enormous star was locked in a dangerous orbit with a small black hole that had been pulling gas and dust off the star. Before the star could swallow the baby black hole, the black hole’s gravitational forces caused the star to explode.

“That black hole has shaped that star’s entire life” from its evolution to the type of explosion that ended its life, said Ashley Villar, a study author and professor at Harvard University. The discovery was published Wednesday in The Astrophysical Journal.

It’s not unusual to see these objects in close proximity to one another because most massive stars come in pairs or multiples, Villar said. Presumably, both objects in this scenario were once stars orbiting near each other before one evolved into a small black hole. Now orbiting around a black hole, the remaining star lost energy and was drawn in closer until it exploded into a new type of supernova never observed before.

https://wapo.st/47uRQcd