It's like a 'demolition derby' on an astronomical scale.
This new pathway to star death is significantly more explosive than the other already known ones.
"Our results show that stars can meet their demise in some of the densest regions of the universe, where they can be driven to collide," said Levan in a statement."This is exciting for understanding how stars die and for answering other questions, such as what unexpected sources might create gravitational waves that we could detect on Earth," Levant added.
Observed by the National Science Foundation’s Gemini South telescope in Chile, the discovery "confounds almost every expectation we have," explained coauthor and Northwestern astronomy doctoral candidate Anya Nugent, a specialist in gamma-ray bursts, in the statement. "For every hundred events that fit into the traditional classification scheme of gamma-ray bursts, there is at least one oddball that throws us for a loop," Northwestern astrophysicist and study coauthor Wen-fai Fong added. "However, it is these oddballs that tell us the most about the spectacular diversity of explosions that the universe is capable of."
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