Stars , to be fair to them , are pretty dependable . Look up at them one day and , assume you have a human lifespan , you’re able to look again some clock time in the time to come and you ’ll likely still witness them there , twinkling away from years tobillions of yearsin the past tense .
Every now and then though , stargazer find thatthey have disappeared , sometimes with no pronto apparent account for where they go . One such star was discovered to have go away in 2019 , leaving scientist stumped as to what happened .
The massive star was first spotted in1962 in the metallic element - poor Kinman Dwarf galaxy around 75 million light - days away . From its spectrum , it was compulsive to be a " luminous blue variable quantity " star , jumbo stars that produce irregular variations in their light .
The star was seen repeatedly in observations of the Kinman Dwarf galaxy in the following decennary . Then in 2019 , astronomers looked using the European Southern Observatory ’s ( ESO ’s ) Very Large Telescope and found that the sensation – which had previously been 2.5 million metre brighter than our Sun – hadcompletely fly .
Looking back through data , they found that it had go away from prospect sometime between 2011 and 2016 . Usually , stars like this one would not disappear without a trace , rather terminate their lives as vivid supernovas .
" It would be highly strange for such a massive star to disappear without producing a lustrous supernova explosion , " Andrew Allan , then a PhD student at Trinity College Dublin and top generator on thepaper , tell in astatement . So where did it go ?
data point show to the team that the mavin was undergo a particularly strong outburst menses before its disappearance , which can make blue variable stars lose hatful and reduction in luminosity .
The squad had two hypotheses . One , that the time period of mellow activity head to a decrease in luminance , which could explicate the star ’s fade if match with the champion being partly veil by dust . instead , the squad say it ’s possible that the star collapsed into a black hole without going supernova , a uncommon consequence that would take exception what we know about the end of the lives of massive hotshot .
Unfortunately , an answer will be hard to come by , given that the galaxy is too far aside to get a good look at with current technology . ESO ’s Extremely Large Telescope , bigger than its Very Large Telescope , may provide more evidence when it launches in2028 .
