A black hole may have been caught in the act of being born.
Astronomers found a signal coming from 200 million light years away. They thought it was a supernova, but it was brighter and quicker than any previous explosion.
Scientists have been puzzled by the event for years. A team of MIT scientists tracked the unusual flash down to its source, finding that millions of high-energy X-ray pulse that flashed at regular intervals, blasted strobes at every 4.2 milliseconds.
The object giving out the flares was not big enough to be a black hole, but it was 1,000 kilometers wide and had a mass less than the Sun.
The MIT research scientist and lead author of a paper published this week in the journal Nature Astronomy said that they likely discovered the birth of a compact object in a supernova.
The baby has a black hole.
The creation of a neutron star, the extremely compact remains of a dying star, is one possibility.
The blast was much stronger than expected.
The amount of energy was more than the typical core collapse supernova. The question was, what could be done to produce more energy?
This happens in normal supernovae, but we haven't seen it before because it's such a messy process. There are possibilities for finding baby black holes or baby neutron stars.
A black hole may have been born during the supernova.
The discovery could lead to the discovery of a new class of small objects in the universe.
A dying star giving birth to a black hole is likely to be a super-bright stellar explosion.
Scientists have discovered a huge black hole right near our star.
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