• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Hundreds Of Stars Have Vanished Without A Trace. A New Study Could Explain Why

May 23, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Over recent years, astronomers have investigated an unusual phenomenon: stars apparently disappearing, leaving behind few clues as to what made them vanish from our view.

In 2019, the Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO) project attempted to catalog how many stars have disappeared from view in the last 70 years and found around 100 that had gone missing without a concrete explanation.

Advertisement

Stars may dim like Betelgeuse or explode as a supernova before collapsing into a black hole or neutron star, but generally do not simply vanish from view. 

“In the delayed neutrino-driven mechanism, neutrinos revive the stalled shock wave, eventually leading to a successful explosion,” the author of a new study write. “In this case, the stellar mantle is successfully ejected and the compact-object remnant is a neutron star (NS) in most cases. However, if the explosion mechanism fails, continuous accretion of matter onto the transiently stable proto-NS pushes the latter over its mass limit and a black hole (BH) forms.”

Smaller stars take longer to use up their fuel. Our own sun (a yellow dwarf) will become a red giant as it depletes its supply of hydrogen, and then a tiny white dwarf as it depletes its supply of helium. These tiny remnants – comprised mainly of carbon and oxygen – may eventually collapse into theoretical black dwarf stars, though there hasn’t been enough time in the universe for this to have happened yet.



Advertisement

So why do some stars appear to just vanish? One possible explanation, which has been tentatively supported by evidence in a new study, is that stars of a sufficient mass can undergo collapse into a black hole without going supernova – they turn directly into a black hole, without a massive explosion we have come to expect.

The team looked at a binary star system at the edge of the Milky Way known as VFTS 243, comprising of a main sequence O star and a back hole orbiting each other every 10.4 days. The team attempted to look for signs of the black hole having emerged following a supernova explosion, including baryonic mass ejecta and “natal kicks” accelerating orbiting objects.

“In the extreme scenario of complete collapse into a BH, the ejecta mass and natal kicks are thought to be very low,” the team explains in their paper. “In this case, mass-energy is lost via neutrinos and, to a lesser extent, gravitational waves. This differs from the archetypical scenario in which anisotropic baryonic ejecta are the main carriers of momentum.”

The team found evidence for the idea that the black hole formed with little baryonic ejecta, suggesting that it could have formed via a total collapse.

Advertisement

“Our calculations provide constraints on the total natal kick and mass loss, which we find to be largely in agreement with mass loss exclusively through neutrino emission and an associated natal kick,” the team wrote, “rather than baryonic mass ejecta”.

While cool in its own right, the team suggested the possibility that this could explain the sudden disappearance of some (large) stars.

“Were one to stand gazing up at a visible star going through a total collapse, it might, just at the right time, be like watching a star suddenly extinguish and disappear from the heavens. The collapse is so complete that no explosion occurs, nothing escapes and one wouldn’t see any bright supernova in the night sky,” Alejandro Vigna-Gómez, co-author of the study, said in a statement. “Astronomers have actually observed the sudden disappearance of brightly shining stars in recent times. We cannot be sure of a connection, but the results we have obtained from analyzing VFTS 243 has brought us much closer to a credible explanation.”

As always, further study is needed, but the observations are quite exciting.

Advertisement

“Our results highlight VFTS 243 as the best observable case so far for the theory of stellar black holes formed through total collapse, where the supernova explosion fails and which our models have shown to be possible,” Professor Irene Tamborra from the Niels Bohr Institute, co-author of the study, added. “It is an important reality check for these models. And we certainly expect that the system will serve as a crucial benchmark for future research into stellar evolution and collapse.”

The study is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Factbox-Top announcements from Apple event
  2. Tennis-Zverev welcomes ATP investigation into abuse allegations
  3. Scientists Found Two Gigantic Structures Deep Within The Earth. They Could Be The Remains Of An Ancient Planet
  4. What Is Iridium And Is It More Expensive Than Gold?

Source Link: Hundreds Of Stars Have Vanished Without A Trace. A New Study Could Explain Why

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Hayabusa2’s Target Asteroid Is 4 Times Smaller Than Thought – Can It Still Touch Down On It?
  • In 2011, Slavc The Wolf Journeyed 1,000 Miles To Begin Verona’s First Wolf Pack In 100 Years
  • Anyone Know What These Marine “Y-Larvae” Grow Into? Because Scientists Have No Clue
  • C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) Closest Earth Approach Is Next Month – Will We See It With The Naked Eye?
  • In 2013, A Volcanic Eruption Wiped Out Life On This Remote Island. Then, Somehow, Plants Reemerged
  • 1-Year-Old Orca Takes Out A Big Fat Seal In This Award-Winning – And Extremely Badass – Photo
  • Saturn And Neptune Will Reach Their Brightest In Days – And Look For Saturn’s Temporary Beauty Spot
  • Reindeer Bring A Gift Greater Than Any Of Santa’s – Hope Of A Stable Climate
  • If Deep-Sea Pressure Can Crush A Human Body, How Do Deep-Sea Creatures Not Implode?
  • Meet Ned: The Lonely Lefty Snail Looking For Love
  • “America Will Lead The Next Giant Leap”: NASA Announces New Milestone In Hunt For Exoplanets
  • What Did Neanderthals Sound Like?
  • One Star System Could Soon Dazzle Us Twice With Nova And Supernova Explosions
  • Unethical Experiments: When Scientists Really Should Have Stopped What They Were Doing Immediately
  • The First Humans Were Hunted By Leopards And Weren’t The Apex Predators We Thought They Were
  • Earth’s Passage Through The Galaxy Might Be Written In Its Rocks
  • What Is An Einstein Cross – And Why Is The Latest One Such A Unique Find?
  • If We Found Life On Mars, What Would That Mean For The Fermi Paradox And The Great Filter?
  • The Longest Living Mammals Are Giants That Live Up To 200 Years In The Icy Arctic
  • Entirely New Virus Detected In Bat Urine, And It’s Only The 4th Of Its Kind Ever Isolated
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version