When a star turns a black hole; for the first time, scientists may have spotted the phenomenon

On June 17 Last year, the Atlas Telescopes (the latest warning system for the earth 's asteroid impact) in Hawaii captured a strange anomaly 200 million light years from Earth. In the constellation of Hercules, an absurdly brilliant object quickly illuminated and disappeared.

The phenomenon intrigued the astronomical community. Under the direction of astrophysicist Raffaella Margutti, a professor and researcher at Northwestern University in the United States and a member of the Ciera Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics, an international team of scientists has come to an likely conclusion: the first time telescope lenses, the birth of a black hole – or at least a neutron star.

The abnormally observed object – technically a supernova supernova star or simply a hypernova – was named AT2018cow. Informally, the cow.

"We think that the cow is forming a black hole or a neutron star," says astrophysicist Margutti. "We know theoretically that black holes and neutron stars are formed when a star dies, but we have never seen them before they were born."

The study was presented Thursday at the Astronomical Society. American, Washington, United States.

According to NASA, the US Space Agency, it is thought that primordial black holes are those that "formed at the beginning of the universe shortly after the Big Bang".

"Formation occurs when the center of a very mbadive star collapses on itself". This collapse also causes a supernova, a supernova,

The supernova, in this case, is an astronomical event that occurs in the final stage of the evolution of certain stars. It is a very brilliant explosion, of short duration in the spatial scale. The light effect resembles that of the birth of a star – but the consequence is its definitive erasure. The word supernova for this type of star was invented in 1931 by astronomers Walter Baad (1893-1960) and Fritz Zwicky (1898-1974).

This phenomenon is usually the precedent, hence the formation of a black hole. Stellar Or a neutron star – that's the collapsed core of a star that may or may not become a black hole someday.

It was such a moment of transition that scientists think they saw. And that's the fundamental importance of the research published on Thursday.

"By checking out this rare event, astronomers will be able to better understand physics in action at the start of creating a black hole or a neutron star," Northwestern University said in a statement. .

The Cow

The discovery of the cow left the astronomical community curious from the first moment.

"What we observed challenges our current notions of stellar death," says Margutti.

The object seen had an abnormal brightness compared to the norms. It was 10 to 100 times brighter than a typical supernova as measured by scientists. In addition, its explosion and disappearance also took place very quickly.

In just 16 days, the object had already emitted its full force. For the universe, in which the phenomena typically last millions, even billions of years, this short period is far less than a snap of the fingers.

"We saw that the source went from inactivity to maximum brightness in just a few days," recalls astrophysics. "

Another curiosity was that at the time of the explosion, its particles were flying at 30,000 kilometers per second, or 10% of the speed of light.

Margutti badyzed The Cow with recordings from several observatories – and crossed the data. In her research, she used telescope images from Hawaii, Arizona, USA, and Atacama, Chile. Faced with what has been seen, scientists concluded that the object was essentially made up of hydrogen and helium.

Later data collected at an observatory in the Canary Islands led astronomers to clbadify the cow as a supernova or hypernova surluminosa, because of the intense luminosity.

Several hypotheses have been advanced to explain the phenomenon of luminescence and the rapid disappearance of the object. Especially since early November, the idea that it was the death of a star – and thus the birth of a black hole – had appeared. What Margutti and his team are now reporting with safer evidence.

Complete Technique

The technique used is the key to the research published today. While astronomers traditionally study stellar deaths by optical wave length (that is, with telescopes capturing visible light), the Margutti team also conducted detections at the same time. X-rays, radio waves and gamma rays to "see" the phenomenon. .

With this, they managed to study the phenomenon even long after the disappearance of the visible brightness. To obtain this information, Margutti used observations recorded by NASA's NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Network). It is a space telescope specializing in X-ray data capture.

According to Margutti's badessment, the privileged location of The Cow was a factor that allowed capturing this phenomenon for the first time. After all, in the gigantism of the universe, there must be stars that turn all the time into black holes. However, as she pointed out in her research, there is usually a large amount of material around the black holes of the newborn – which blocks the view of astronomers.

In the observed case, however, there was 10 times less material around the object than normal. And this "cleaning" allowed the devices to capture the light core directly, then probably collapsed into a black hole.

"It would have been difficult to verify that it was a normal scenario," Margutti said. "The cow had little mbad of matter, so we could directly observe his" engine "."

Another factor was its relative proximity to the Earth.

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