No Boom

A massive star in the Andromeda Galaxy might have tried to blow itself to bits, but it failed. Instead, almost the entire star collapsed to form a black hole about five times the mass of the Sun. Astronomers discovered the possible misfire while combing through observations by NeoWise, a space telescope that wrapped up its work a couple of years ago. They found an object that brightened dramatically at infrared wavelengths, which are invisible to the human eye, then slowly faded again. Earlier observations at visible wavelengths showed a supergiant star, perhaps a hundred thousand times as bright as the Sun. But as the infrared peaked and faded, the visible light faded completely – the star simply vanished. The astronomers concluded that the event was a failed supernova. The star stopped producing nuclear reactions in its core, so the core collapsed. A shockwave plowed through the star’s outer layers, blasting their gas outward. In most cases, such a shockwave creates a titanic explosion – a supernova. But this blast wasn’t powerful enough to overcome the core’s gravitational pull. So almost all the gas fell back onto the core, making it massive enough to form a black hole. A little material did escape. It formed a wide disk of gas and dust around the dying star. Energy from the star made it shine brightly in the infrared – a short flare-up that waned as the supergiant star collapsed and faded from sight. Script by Damond Benningfield