A star appears to have collapsed straight into a black hole without supernova

Summary

Massive Star Goes Out With a Whimper Instead of a Bang (Artist's Illustration) This illustration shows the final stages in the life of a supermassive star that fails to explode as a supernova but instead implodes under gravity to form a black hole. From left to right: the...NASA, ESA, and P. Jeffries (STScI) 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. VIDEO A team of astronomers at The Ohio State University watched a star disappear and possibly become a black hole. Instead of becoming a black hole through the expected process of a supernova, the black hole candidate formed through a "failed supernova." - Download video in HD formats from NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio.NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Katrina Jackson "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." All the tests came up negative. The star was no longer there. By a careful process of elimination, the researchers eventually concluded that the star must have ...