Scientists monitor the most dangerous explosion we have seen in space | Urania

Astronomers observed an explosion 180 million light-years away that defies our current understanding of explosions in space, which turned out to be much flatter than once thought possible.

An explosion of our size Solar System Scientists have been baffled because part of its shape – similar to that of an extremely flat disk – defies everything we know about explosions in space.

The observed explosion was illuminating fast blue optical transient (FBOT) – An extremely rare class of explosions that are less common than explosions supernovae. The first bright FBOT was discovered in 2018 and nicknamed “cow” (AT2018cow).

Starbursts in the universe are almost always spherical in shape, just as the stars themselves are spherical in shape. However, this explosion occurred 180 million light years Hence, it is the most nearly spherical object observed in space, and its shape resembles a disk that appeared a few days after its discovery. This part of the explosion may have been caused by material ejected by the star just before it exploded.

It is still not known how these bright FBOT bursts occur, but we hope that this observation, and its results published In Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, it will bring us closer to understanding it.

Dr Justin Maund, lead author of the study from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, said: Very little is known about FBOT explosions—they don’t behave the way stars should, they’re very bright, and they evolve very quickly. Simply put, it’s weird, and this new note just makes it even weirder.

We hope this new discovery helps us shed more light on it – we never thought explosions could be nearly spherical. There are several possible explanations for this phenomenon: the stars involved in the explosion may have formed a disk just before their death, or it could be a failed supernova in which the star’s core collapses into Black hole or neutron starThen he eats the rest of the star.

Scientists made this discovery after accidentally spotting a flash of polarized light. They were able to measure the polarity of the blast using Liverpool Telescope It is located in La Palma.

Polarimetry allowed them to measure the shape of the explosion, effectively pinpointing something the size of our solar system but in galaxy 180 million light-years away. Then they were able to use the data to reconstruct the 3D shape of the explosion and were able to map the edges of the explosion – allowing them to see how flat it was.

The scientists will now conduct a new study with the Vera Rubin International Observatory in Chile to help uncover more FBOTs and better understand them.

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Agnes Nowak

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Source: University of Sheffield

Pictured: An artist’s impression of a cosmic explosion. Source: Philip Drury, University of Sheffield