astronomy, new discoveries, stars, supermassive stars, supernova

Total Annihilation of Supermassive Stars

A renegade star exploding in a distant galaxy has forced astronomers to set aside decades of research and focus on a new breed of supernovae that can utterly annihilate its parent star — leaving no remnant behind. The signature event, something astronomers had never witnessed before, may represent the way in which the most supermassive ...

Troy Oakes

Artist’s concept of the SN 2016iet pair-instability supernova.