A collision with a dead star causes the eruption of stars as we have seen before

For years, a strange glow from the depths of the night sky has puzzled astronomers. Some observed it closely and felt the slow emission of light – the star’s body was forced into its sub-star and exploded in a massive star explosion or supernova.

The astonishing chain reaction happened in 2014, but its evidence only reached Earth because of the speed at which light travels through space, according to researchers who released details of Saga on Thursday. in the journal Science.

“Theorists have speculated that it could happen, but this is the first time we’ve seen such an event,” said Dillon Dong, lead author of the Caltech Graduate Student Study. a report.

About 300 years ago, the researchers say, the largest body of a star entered near the smallest living star and made the latter its mate. And that’s how their dance of death began.

One of the biggest cadaver stars that dragged another stellar body into the Land of the Dead could be a black hole, which has a very high gravitational force, and will suck everything into an abyss, or a neutron star. Neutron stars are also very powerful. It’s roughly made up of neutrons – the equivalent of the weight of a tablespoon of Mount Everest.

After the two stars orbiting each other for centuries, they collided. This collision caused a supernova or starburst explosion. A jet of light erupted from the center of the supernova star, causing the object to fall on itself and suddenly illuminate the space around it.

The glowing light produced the brightness the Tank team detected in the form of short-lived radio waves, which were then compared to the x-ray spectrum in the sky. The data was collected from the largest Sky Array Survey (VLASS) which wants to image about 80% of the sky in three phases in seven years.

“Of all the things we thought we’d find with VLASS, this isn’t one of them,” said Greg Halinen, professor of astronomy at the California Institute of Technology.