We may have seen a 'dirty fireball' star explosion for the first time

 

Dying stars can emit a powerful jet of radiation, as seen in an artist’s impression. Image courtesy of Stocktrek Images, Inc./Alamy.

Joel Kontinen

What do dying stars do when they die? Some astronomers have seen a certain type of explosion when they see a dying star bursts into flames and then dies.  

When a dying star gets old, it probably then it explodes and dies.  

Astronomers think they have seen a type of explosion produced by a dying star called a dirty fireball for the first time, and it could help us understand how massive stars die.

When a massive star runs out of fuel, it can collapse and explode in several ways. If a black hole is produced in the collapse, an extremely powerful jet of radiation can burst through the star, producing a flash of high-energy light called a gamma ray burst.

Source:

 Alex Wilkins 2026 We may have seen a 'dirty fireball' star explosion for the first time | New Scientist 3 April 

No little green men on new star

 

Image courtesy of B. Knispel / C.J. Clark / Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics / NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, fair use doctrine.

Joel Kontinen

The mystery at the heart of an unexplained, bright point of gamma-ray light in the sky has been solved: There's a deadly spider star flaying a second, wimpier star to bits, sending out rapid-fire bursts of gamma radiation in the process.

The fastest-spinning among them are millisecond pulsars. When a millisecond pulsar is locked in a rare, tight orbit with a lightweight star, it slowly shreds its partner to bits with each rotation. These binary cannibals are known as black widow or redback stars. Now, with the help of citizen scientists, a team of researchers has revealed a new redback at the heart of a bright system known as PSR J2039–5617.

It is lonely in the universe.

Space signals tend to be false alarms. Not even the infamous wow-signal was probably cause by a comet, not aliens

New Scientist has said that aliens are more likely than God..

But only if we a priori rule out the God who in the beginning created everything.

Life cannot create itself.

Source:

Letzter,- Rafi. 2021.  Mystery of gamma radiation solved: Hidden cannibal star is just having dinner. Live Science 8 February.