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Gizmodo
3 days ago
- Science
- Gizmodo
Star Tries to Swallow a Black Hole, Ignites One of the Strangest Supernovas Ever Seen
Black holes are dark, menacing objects with gravity so intense that not even light can escape, so you don't want to mess with them. A recent discovery of one of the strangest supernovas ever observed reveals the tragic story of a star that tried to defy the powerful pull of a nearby black hole but later conceded in an explosive death. A team of astronomers discovered the unusual supernova, dubbed SN 2023zkd, while digging through observations of particularly interesting targets gathered by telescopes around the world. The stellar explosion may have been sparked by a deadly encounter with a black hole, leading to the untimely detonation of the star. The discovery, detailed in a new paper published in the Astrophysical Journal, marks the strongest evidence to date of cosmic interactions between stars and black holes that may lead to supernova. The Zwicky Transient Facility in Southern California discovered this particular supernova in July 2023, and it was later flagged by an artificially intelligent algorithm trained to alert the team every morning to the most unusual stellar explosions found in the collective data. The bot flagged the supernova as it appeared to be 'evolving in an odd way,' Alexander Gagliano, a fellow at the National Science Foundation's Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions and lead author of the study, told Gizmodo. 'There are two particularly strange features of this supernova,' Gagliano said. It 'looks like it exploded twice—it brightened, dimmed, then brightened again!' Although there was only one explosion, the unusual evolution of the supernova was the first clue that it had originated from a complex environment. 'Second, normally the start of that explosion is quite fast (it takes maybe a few days to a month to reach its peak brightness),' Gagliano added. 'In this case, we actually dug deeper into the data before the supernova and noticed that the star was clearly brightening slowly for years prior to its death.' The team combined the unusual nature of the supernova along with other evidence to trace the origin story of the explosion and found that it points to a star merging with a black hole companion. The astronomers behind the discovery believe that the massive star was locked in a deadly orbital dance with the black hole. As the two objects were drawn closer to one another, the star partially swallowed the black hole. That led to gravitational stress imposed upon the star, which then triggered the supernova explosion. Another possible scenario is that the black hole completely tore the star apart before it could explode on its own, according to the paper. If it did, the black hole would have pulled in the debris shed by the star, which would have crashed into the gas surrounding the black hole and triggered a supernova emission. Either way, the black hole was left standing while the star suffered an explosive death. 'LAISS, the AI system responsible for catching SN 2023zkd, works by extracting properties from both the supernova's light and the supernova's home (its galaxy). These features are then compared against a large reference dataset of known objects to identify statistical outliers,' Gagliano said. 'Anomalous signals may indicate rare or previously unseen phenomena.' A specialized Slack bot then posts the outliers in real time to a channel, and team members review the list of candidates every morning to coordinate follow-up observations. Using the AI system, the team is still on the hunt for more exotic phenomena and strange anomalies. 'It's a very exciting time to study supernovae,' Gagliano said.
Yahoo
17-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Astronomers capture birth of a new solar system around sun-like baby star
Astronomers have, for the first time, discovered the moment when planets started to form around a sun-like baby star, scientists reported Wednesday. The specks of planet-forming material are emerging around HOPS-315, a protostar or baby star located 1,300 light-years away from us. One light year is approximately 5.88 trillion miles. While astronomers have seen discs of gas and dust around protostars before, they've never before identified a new planetary system at such an early stage. Minerals in the system around HOPS-315 are just starting to form. "We're seeing a system that looks like what our Solar System looked like when it was just beginning to form," study co-author Merel van 't Hoff, a professor at Purdue University, said in a news release from the European Southern Observatory (ESO). The observatory paired up with NASA's Webb Space Telescope to identify the minerals forming the new solar system. Researchers turned to data from our own solar system to determine that these minerals show the start of a new system. In Earth's solar system, the first solid materials to form can now be found inside ancient meteorites. Those ancient meteorites contain a mineral called silicon monoxide, which only forms at extremely high temperatures, like those near a young star. Scientists were able to identify the formation of silicon monoxide around HOPS-315, which they said tells them they've caught the development of a solar system at an early stage. "This is the first time this early stage of planet-building has ever been observed outside our own Solar System," the Planetary Society wrote in a social media post about the discovery. The discovery marks "the birth of the seeds of the planets," study co-author Edwin Bergin, a professor at the University of Michigan, told CBS News. The silicate-mineral rich material around HOPS-315 will make planets after another million years or so. "So we are watching the beginnings of the construction of planets," Bergin said. With the discovery, Bergin said researchers now know what to look for to find other budding systems. ESO's Alma telescope network in Chile captured an image of the still-forming planetary system around HOPS-315. In orange, the image shows the distribution of carbon monoxide blowing away from HOPS-315. Blue shows a narrow jet of silicon monoxide, which is also beaming away from the baby star. Astronomers hope it can help them learn more about the dawn of our solar system. "This system is one of the best that we know to actually probe some of the processes that happened in our Solar System," van 't Hoff said in a news release. HOPS-315 is much younger than the Sun; it's about 100,000 years old, Bergin said. "So we get a glimpse of the system in its infancy," Bergin said in an email. "Given that the Sun is 4.6 Billion years old this is a baby star that is still gaining mass and getting bigger." Son of man who was violently detained by ICE reacts after release Mike Johnson breaks from Trump, calls on DOJ to release Epstein files Fighting elderly loneliness
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
India's space agency suffers setback as it fails to launch satellite
India's space agency says it has failed to place the EOS-9 surveillance satellite into the intended orbit after its launch vehicle PSLV-C61 encountered a technical issue in a rare setback for the agency, known for its low-cost projects. The EOS-09 Earth observation satellite took off on board the PSLV-C61 launch vehicle from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, located in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, on Sunday morning. 'During the third stage … there was a fall in the chamber pressure of the motor case, and the mission could not be accomplished,' said V Narayanan, chief of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). 'We are studying the entire performance, we shall come back at the earliest,' he said in a statement to local media. The world's most populous nation has a comparatively low-budget aerospace programme that is rapidly closing in on the milestones set by global space powers. Active in space research since the 1960s, India has launched satellites for itself and other countries, and successfully put one in orbit around Mars in 2014. In August 2023, India became just the fourth nation to land an unmanned craft on the moon after Russia, the United States and China. Since then, ISRO's ambitions have continued to grow. Its first attempt to land on the moon failed in 2019. So far, ISRO has recorded three setbacks in PSLV missions, including Sunday's. The first failure was in 1993. On Sunday, Narayanan said ISRO would study the performance and provide details on what went wrong at a later stage. According to local media reports, a Failure Analysis Committee will also be set up to investigate the space agency's latest setback.
