Astronomers have observed a strange but powerful supernova explosion that not only marked the death of a massive, highly evolved star, but also may have heralded the birth of a pair of binary black holes.<\/p>\n
The team behind this discovery studied the supernova explosion<\/a> SN 2022esa with the 8.2-meter Subaru telescope located at the Mauna Kea Observatory<\/a> in Hawaii and the Seimei telescope in Japan.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n They found the supernova was likely the result of the explosive death of a massive, hot, luminous star at the end of its evolutionary development, known as a “Wolf-Rayet star.” This star dwelled in the galaxy 2MFGC 13525, located around 320 million light-years away from Earth.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n The scientists discovered that SN the supernova demonstrated a clear and stable period lasting around a month, which led them to theorize that it was the result of periodic eruptions in this system, one each Earth-year before the final explosion.<\/p>\n That kind of stable periodicity is only possible in a binary system, the researchers say, indicating this doomed Wolf-Rayet star<\/a> was partnered by either a black hole<\/a> or a massive star that will one day explode to birth a black hole. The end result in both cases is a black hole binary.<\/p>\n “The fates of massive stars, the birth of a black hole, or even a black hole binary, are very important questions in astronomy,” team leader Keiichi Maeda of Kyoto University said in a statement<\/a>. “Our study provides a new direction to understand the whole evolutionary history of massive stars toward the formation of black hole binaries.”<\/p>\n The team’s findings don’t just reveal more about binary black holes and their origins; they also demonstrate the power of teaming two different telescopes with different capabilities. The Seimei telescope brings flexibility and rapid response times to this tag-team, while Subaru provides its high-sensitivity.<\/p>\n As a result, these telescopes are likely to remain teamed for years to come.<\/p>\n “We expect many interesting discoveries on the nature of astronomical transients and explosions like supernova,” Maeda said.<\/p>\n