A massive star completely destroyed by a supernova is puzzling scientists

astronomy.com ^ | August 16, 2019 | Korey Haynes

[BenLurkin]

In November of 2016, the sharp-eyed Gaia spacecraft spied a supernova that exploded some billion light-years from Earth. Astronomers followed up with more telescopes, and quickly realized that this supernova – dubbed SN2016iet – was an odd one in many ways.

For one, the star that caused the supernova seemed to orbit far in the hinterlands of its tiny, previously unknown dwarf galaxy, some 54,000 light-years from its center. Most massive stars are born in denser clusters of stars, and it’s a puzzle how this one came to form so far out.

And this star was extremely massive, starting life as some 200 times the mass of the Sun, near the upper limit of what scientists think is possible for a single star to weigh.

The supernova itself also left what appeared to be the signature of two explosions, separated by about 100 days. Astronomers think this isn’t actually due to multiple explosions, but from the explosion hitting different layers of material the star lost in the years leading up to its death and left scattered around it in a diffuse cloud.

The star meets many of the criteria for something called a pair-instability supernova, a kind of explosion that some extremely massive stars should theoretically undergo. Such an event leaves the star completely destroyed, leaving nothing behind. But finding examples of these rare stellar explosions has been difficult, and this is still one of the first scientists have discovered. And even in that rare company, SN2016iet remains an oddball find.

[BenLurkin]

The same patch of sky is shown in 2014, before the supernova exploded, and in 2018, highlighting just how far outside the galaxy the explosion occurred.
Center for Astrophysics

[yesthatjallen]

Dark Matter.

Everything in astrophysics can be explained with Dark Matter.

It's the Universal Fudge Factor.

[HombreSecreto]

Cool!

You better move over
Here comes a Super-nova
Kryptonite- - -
Destination moon

[JBW1949]

And this affects the growing season for tomatoes in waht way???

[Telepathic Intruder]

"something called a pair-instability supernova"

Otherwise called a hypernova. The larger a star is, the hotter it burns. The core undergoes so much fusion of hydrogen to helium that there is an overabundance of gamma rays, and energy begins converting to matter again in the form of electron-positron pairs. This is an endothermic process which temporarily stalls thermal expansion, a necessary counterbalance to gravitational collapse. As the core begins collapsing, pressure spikes and all the hydrogen converts to helium at once, rather than slowly over time. The star explodes.

[BenLurkin]

Mutations.

Terrifying mutated tomatoes.

Killer tomatoes.

[BenLurkin]

gnip

[SuperLuminal]

Terrorism...

[dsrtsage]

Careful, you are showing your age there, grasshopper

[captain_dave]

Supernovae are assumed to exist based on currently accepted theory. Like Darwinian Evolution, there’re too many assumptions and too many extrapolations based on those assumptions. I like the Electric Universe theory (visit YouTube channel: ThunderboltsProject). It’s based on scalable and reproducible experimental plasma physics.

[lee martell]

“This galaxy is not big enough for the both of us.
ONE of us has to implode, explode or step into the next parallel universe and it WON’T be me.
I am SuperNova!!!”

[litehaus]

Think CERN will give us all a warning B4 they make their own ‘black hole’ that devours our earth??

[Telepathic Intruder]

There is nothing CERN does that does not already occur in the upper atmosphere with cosmic rays, with millions of times more energy. If high-energy particle collisions can create black holes, then Earth would have been destroyed billions of years ago.

[litehaus]

then Earth would have been destroyed billions of years ago.”

Maybe we are in the ‘first hour’ of a billion trillion to come ?

[PIF]

Just a Xeelee test of a super weapon to kill dark matter entities.

[Texas Eagle]

Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. If this star is 54 billion light years away, how long ago did it actually get blowed up?

[JBW1949]

Did this happen once before???

Did we have the “Attack of The Killer Tomatoes”?????

[buckalfa]

"....pressure spikes and all the hydrogen converts to helium at once, rather than slowly over time. The star explodes."

So you are saying the star exploded because of a stuck fart 😏 ?

[This_Dude]

5,865,696,000,000
X54,000,000,000

---

The answer.

Calculator doesn’t go that high. I tried;-)

[This_Dude]

I had that problem formatted differently when I wrote it, not sure why it looks so weird now, my mistake