A star appears to have collapsed straight into a black hole without supernova (2017)

by bfeiston 4/19/2025, 9:02:46 AM with 11 comments
  • by bell-coton 4/19/2025, 1:05:59 PM

    Here's a short (12 page) and pretty easy article from The Astrophysical Journal (2003), about end of life for massive stars. And why some would "directly" collapse (no big & bright supernova) into black holes.

    https://open.clemson.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&co...

  • by andrewstuarton 4/19/2025, 12:06:08 PM

    It’s a weird and scary thought.

    Imagine seeing that up fairly close - a massive star just shrivel into a black hole and wink out.

  • by bell-coton 4/19/2025, 9:21:15 AM

    It's been a while since I crawled Wikipedia's rabbit hole on this - but I recall there being regions of the stellar "mass vs. metallicity" graph in which direct collapse to a black hole is the expected outcome.

    Is there an astrophysicist in the house?

  • by ameliuson 4/19/2025, 10:46:59 AM

    What is the timespan of such an event?

  • by mikhailfrancoon 4/21/2025, 5:36:10 AM

      As many as 30 percent of such stars 
  may quietly collapse into black holes
  no supernova required.
    where 'such' refers to 25 solar mass stars.

    Is that a significant contribution to 'dark matter'?

  • by therealfionaon 4/19/2025, 4:40:01 PM

    Here is an article about some JWST data of the star.

    https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.16121

  • by udev4096on 4/19/2025, 9:35:20 AM

    (2017)

  • by roman_soldieron 4/19/2025, 10:23:27 AM

    Could be an advanced civilisation sucking all the stars energy into the back of their spaceship.

  • by keepamovinon 4/19/2025, 10:31:34 AM

    Or something just moved in front of it. It did not rage against the dying of the light, the definition of out with a whimper.