In a cosmic spectacle straight out of a sci-fi movie 🌌, astronomers have witnessed a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ supernova explosion in jaw-dropping detail. Led by Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, an international team tracked the fiery death of a red supergiant star in the neighboring galaxy Messier 101—and the results are rewriting what we know about stellar life cycles.
Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope 🛰️, scientists watched in real-time as the star exploded, sending bursts of plasma glowing like ‘100 million suns’ across space. For the first time ever, they pieced together data from before the explosion—when the star was just chilling as a red giant—and its explosive finale, creating a cosmic ‘before-and-after’ portrait 🎨.
The kicker? The team noticed missing mass post-explosion, hinting the supernova likely birthed a black hole 🕳️ that swallowed part of the star’s remains. Talk about a glow-up!
Published in Nature, this research gives Gen Z a front-row seat to how stars die—and how black holes are born. As one researcher put it: ‘This is like catching the universe in the act of reinventing itself.’ 🌟
