Astronomers have witnessed a rare cosmic event: a massive star that didn’t explode in a spectacular supernova, but instead quietly collapsed into a black hole.
Astronomers have directly observed a dying massive star that did not explode in a supernova. Instead, it collapsed inward, forming a black hole. The event provides the most complete set of observations ever collected of a star making this transition, allowing scientists to piece together a detailed physical explanation of how it unfolded.
By combining new telescope data with more than ten years of archived observations, researchers were able to test and sharpen existing theories about how very massive stars end their lives. Rather than blowing apart in a dramatic explosion, the star’s core gave way under gravity and became a black hole. As that happened, its unstable outer layers were gradually pushed outward.
The findings, published February 12 in Science, are generating excitement because they offer a rare look at how black holes are born. The results could help explain why some massive stars explode at the end of their lives while others collapse quietly.
“This is just the beginning of the story,” says Kishalay De, an associate research scientist at the Simons Foundation’s Flatiron Institute and lead author on the new study. Light from dusty debris surrounding the newborn black hole, he says, “is going to be visible for decades at the sensitivity level of telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope, because it’s going to continue to fade very slowly. And this may end up being a benchmark for understanding how stellar black holes form in the universe.”
