Astronomers solve a 15-year space mystery: A hungry black hole makes a star 'fake' supernovas
Original headline: NASA’s Chandra Finds Source of Star’s Mysterious Outbursts — science.nasa.gov
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Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have finally cracked a long-standing cosmic mystery. For years, a massive star named AT 2016blu has been performing dramatic, supernova-like outbursts every 113 days, only to recover and do it again. The new data reveals the culprit: a hidden companion, likely a black hole or neutron star, that repeatedly steals gas from the giant star, triggering violent explosions of light.
The discovery solves a puzzle that has perplexed astronomers for 15 years and marks the first time such an object has been caught in the X-ray spectrum. It provides a new model for understanding a class of unstable stars that mimic supernovas, offering key insights into the violent gravitational dances of binary star systems. The universe just revealed another of its hidden, chaotic partnerships.
Read the original at science.nasa.gov
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