Some stars don’t go out with fireworks. They simply fade, as if a cosmic switch flips and the universe swallows the evidence. Astronomers have spent the past decade chasing these quiet endings, hunting “failed supernovae” that collapse straight into black holes with barely a whisper. The mystery is both maddening and magnetic: if there’s no ...
The last few years have been a blur of jaw-dropping space science, the kind that forces you to rewrite old notes and scrap comfortable assumptions. Telescopes peered deeper, probes flew braver, and data sets quietly whispered new truths about the cosmos. As a science journalist, I’ve watched seasoned researchers blink in surprise as theories bent ...
Among the most energetic events in the universe’s catalog of violent events since the Big Bang, astronomers have found a new extreme in the class of cosmic explosions. Dubbed extreme nuclear transients (ENTs), these rare, ultra-luminous events were seen in the centers of far-off galaxies where supermassive black holes split apart large stars in catastrophic ...
