Collapsing star gives birth to a black hole

[Binary_Bark]

​

Astronomers have watched as a massive, dying star was likely reborn as a black hole. It took the combined power of the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), and NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes to go looking for remnants of the vanquished star, only to find that it disappeared out of sight.
It went out with a whimper instead of a bang.
The star, which was 25 times as massive as our sun, should have exploded in a very bright supernova. Instead, it fizzled out—and then left behind a black hole.
"Massive fails" like this one in a nearby galaxy could explain why astronomers rarely see supernovae from the most massive stars, said Christopher Kochanek, professor of astronomy at The Ohio State University and the Ohio Eminent Scholar in Observational Cosmology.
As many as 30 percent of such stars, it seems, may quietly collapse into black holes—no supernova required.
"The typical view is that a star can form a black hole only after it goes supernova," Kochanek explained. "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."
He leads a team of astronomers who published their latest results in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Among the galaxies they've been watching is NGC 6946, a spiral galaxy 22 million light-years away that is nicknamed the "Fireworks Galaxy" because supernovae frequently happen there—indeed, SN 2017eaw, discovered on May 14th, is shining near maximum brightness now. Starting in 2009, one particular star, named N6946-BH1, began to brighten weakly. By 2015, it appeared to have winked out of existence.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-05-collapsing-star-birth-black-hole.html#jCp

 

[The_MAC]

Sounds like a headline article in the Daily Sun..

 

[Ninja'd]

If ever a science headline resembled a porn title...

 

[Ninji]

Now if only we could somehow use this to get rid of ZUMA

 

[Solarion]

/Star vanishes
/black hole

That is some grade A science right there.

 

[Aquila ka Hecate]

/Star vanishes
/black hole

That is some grade A science right there.

Go read the abstract from the MNRAS

 

[saturnz]

the supernova black holes are quite cool in how they are formed

this seems like a bit of a dud

 

[Hamish McPanji]

If ever a science headline resembled a porn title...

And it came early too, to everyone's disappointment

 

[WaxLyrical]

Is this the title for the latest episode of American Gods.