Or something just moved in front of it. It did not rage against the dying of the light, the definition of out with a whimper.
TFA says the astronomers checked for that. It's still a possibility, but pretty unlikely.
A star appears to have collapsed straight into a black hole without supernova (2017)
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Re: A star appears to have collapsed straight into a black hole without supernova (2017)
#22Re: A star appears to have collapsed straight into a black hole without supernova (2017)
#23Re: A star appears to have collapsed straight into a black hole without supernova (2017)
#24It’s a weird and scary thought. Imagine seeing that up fairly close - a massive star just shrivel into a black hole and wink out.
I'd love to see a realistic render of this.
Re: A star appears to have collapsed straight into a black hole without supernova (2017)
#25Re: A star appears to have collapsed straight into a black hole without supernova (2017)
#26Could be an advanced civilisation sucking all the stars energy into the back of their spaceship.
Or it could be the sun eating dragon :-)
Joking aside, it could be a Kardashev Type II (or higher) civilization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
They could have used a dense Dyson sphere to “suck” the energy of the star, but if that was the case we would be able to detect its infrared radiation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
Anyway, I prefer the giant star eating dragon alternative ;-)
Re: A star appears to have collapsed straight into a black hole without supernova (2017)
#27Could be an advanced civilisation sucking all the stars energy into the back of their spaceship.
And then where does it go?
Re: A star appears to have collapsed straight into a black hole without supernova (2017)
#28Here is an article about some JWST data of the star.
Re: A star appears to have collapsed straight into a black hole without supernova (2017)
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn’t necessarily switch anything off or collapse - it’s possible for a star of the right mass and density to simply end up with a core that is held up only by degeneracy pressure, and the core slowly shrinks as it cools until it lies within its schwarzschild radius, and the rest of the star is either quietly consumed by this relatively slow process, or just escapes as though nothing much happened. Which from th…
It cannot just escape without a push as the gravity is still the same?
I assume they meant until all the mass collapses across the threshold, the remaining shell of the star outside is still radiating energy and a "solar" wind, which is particles escaping. So some is escaping away while some is slipping under.