What they saw defied previous beliefs about how these stars behaved right before blowing up
For the first time ever, scientists were able to track a red supergiant in real-time during its final 130 days, watching the massive star’s rapid self-destruction and death throes before a violent explosion.
It was previously believed that red supergiant stars remained calm and didn’t show any symptoms of approaching demise – like eruptions or luminous emissions – ahead of their collapse into a type II supernova.
But a new study by astronomers at Northwestern University and the University of California, Berkeley suggests that things actually happen differently, having detected bright radiation coming from a red supergiant star before it exploded.
This could mean that at least some supergiants undergo significant internal transformation over time, which leads to spectacular ejections of gas ahead of their deaths.
The scientists created an animated video of what they witnessed when the star self-destructed and collapsed.
“For the first time, we watched a red supergiant star explode,” Wynn Jacobson-Galán, the papa’s lead author, said, calling the team’s work “a breakthrough in our understanding of what massive stars do moments before they die.”
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