A big worldwide workforce of astronomers and astrophysicists has found one thing new within the night time sky—a kind of explosion that’s a lot brighter than most supernovae and is named luminous quick cooler (LFC). Of their paper revealed in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the group describes the explosion, the way it was discovered and what they’ve realized about it to date.
Beforehand, supernovae had been believed to provide the brightest sort of explosion within the identified universe. They happen when stars run out of gasoline and collapse in on themselves—after which explode in a mighty burst of sunshine and power. Many such occasions have been recorded. However now, it seems that one other phenomenon could problem supernovae because the brightest sort of explosion.
An explosion was detected as workforce members had been analyzing information captured by the ATLAS community of robotic telescopes. Because the development of the explosion unfolded, the researchers got here to comprehend that what they had been witnessing was not a supernova. Along with its unbelievable brightness, it was situated in a spot the place supernova don’t happen—a galaxy with billions of stars close to in dimension to the sun. Thus, it was unlikely such a galaxy would have a star sufficiently big to turn out to be a supernova.
The analysis workforce discovered that the explosion progressed way more shortly than any identified supernova. As a substitute of taking 20 days to succeed in peak brightness after which ebbing over the next months, the occasion they had been witnessing took simply 15 days to succeed in its peak brightness after which ebbed away to nothing after only one month.
Shocked by their observations, the researchers started sifting by way of archival telescope information and located two different situations of comparable explosions—one which occurred in 2020 and one other in 2009. They counsel that such occasions are a beforehand unknown sort of explosion of unknown trigger. And since the discover remains to be so new, there’s not but any proof to elucidate why they happen.
The analysis workforce suggests it’s doable that they’re the results of a black hole and a star colliding. Rather more work is required to search out out if that’s the case, or if the explosions are as a result of one thing else solely.
Extra data:
M. Nicholl et al, AT 2022aedm and a New Class of Luminous, Quick-cooling Transients in Elliptical Galaxies, The Astrophysical Journal Letters (2023). DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/acf0ba
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