According to the recent findings of scientists, a dying star can quietly collapse into a black hole and not explode in a supernova. This is much different than previous theories, which believed that the supernova was the only way before a star can create a black hole.
The recent death of a star without the supernova has caught the attention of scientists. This "massive fail" was recently spotted by the scientists of NASA through the Hubble telescope wherein they saw a star, 25 times bigger than Earth's Sun, quietly collapse into the black hole, Huffington Post reported.
The recently spotted dying star was in a spiral galaxy 22 million light-years from Earth, in NGC 6946. This galaxy has been nicknamed by scientists as the "Fireworks Galaxy" due to the high number of supernovas that have happened there. However, in 2009, a star of in the same galaxy, called N6946-BH1 became less bright and by 2015, it vanished, Space reported. This led the scientists to wonder whether it was hiding behind a dust cloud or faded further since no supernova was witnessed in the same zone.
The absence of the supernova is something that caught the attention of the scientists. As, according to previous studies, it was believed that a star of such big sizes has to explode in a supernova before it can create a black hole. However, the recent event took the scientists by surprise as the giant star quietly collapsed.
In similar reports, it has been said that the process of becoming a black hole is more complex than it was previously thought. But this event has kind of explained the reason why 30 percent of the massive stars collapse into a black hole quietly.
Christopher Kochanek, an Ohio State University astronomer has said, "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." Moreover, another scientist from the Ohio State University has stated that the recent star, N6946-BH1's failed supernova is the first that they have found in their seven years of the survey.
