We have retold 5 papers by this author. 1 of them with a full read. most often about: stellar evolution, black hole, primordial black hole. 30 co-authors across our retellings.
In 2014, astronomers spotted a massive yellow star in the Andromeda galaxy. By 2022, it had vanished without a trace — without the usual blinding explosion of a supernova. It was as if someone simply switched off the light.
The center of a galaxy is a bustling metropolis where a giant black hole often snatches inattentive stars. But telescopes caught a flare in a quiet suburb, tens of thousands of light-years from the core. This gave away a wandering black hole — an invisible predator, flung out of the center after an ancient galaxy collision.
On the night of August 18, 2025, the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA detectors felt a tremor in spacetime — as if two neutron stars had collided somewhere far away. Almost immediately, telescopes found a point of light in the same patch of sky.
A distant lamp shines through uneven glass. The glass bends the rays, and instead of one flame on the wall, several appear — some brighter, some fainter. In much the same way, a massive galaxy bends the light of an exploded star. There was one explosion, but the images show four glowing points.
17 supernovae from the ZTF DR2 sample lit up ahead of schedule. In the first hours and days after the explosion, they emitted more light than standard models predict. Astronomers compare this to a Bickford fuse: before the blinding flash tears across the sky, a precursor spark runs through the outer layers.