Astronomers have discovered the rarest supernova SN 2023vbw
Astronomers have discovered one of the clearest examples of a rare pair-unstable supernova that completely destroys massive stars, leaving behind neither black holes nor neutron stars. This was announced on June 1 by the Science X news portal.
The flash, designated SN 2023vbw, was first recorded by the Zwicky Transient Facility in October 2023. The explosion occurred on the outskirts of a small dwarf galaxy with a low metal content, located at a distance of about 1.3 billion light-years from Earth. Initially, the object was classified as an ordinary type II supernova that occurs during core collapse, but further observations revealed unique anomalies.
The brightness of SN 2023vbw increased for 190 days, reaching a peak, followed by a sharp decline. The total energy emitted was more than 10 times higher than that of ordinary supernovae. Modeling has shown that the progenitor of the explosion was an unusual blue supergiant, the mass of the ejected substance of which is estimated at 170-350 solar masses.
The "economics" of such explosions are radically different from standard models: the kinetic energy of SN 2023vbw turned out to be 60-130 times higher than the maximum possible for a typical collapse of an iron core. Researchers suggest that a supermassive star could have formed as a result of the merger of two luminaries in a binary system.
Pair-unstable supernovae occur in stars of enormous mass, where extreme temperatures in the core provoke the birth of electron-positron pairs. This process deprives the star of radiation pressure, which resists gravity. As a result, an uncontrolled thermonuclear explosion occurs, completely absorbing all the matter of the star.
"Since supernova SN 2023vbw is located at a close distance from us, it remains bright enough to continue multi-wavelength observations, which will reveal the history of mass loss of its progenitor and explosive nucleosynthesis," the authors noted.
Scientists expect that future surveys using the Vera Rubin Observatory and the Roman space Telescope will detect dozens and hundreds of similar events, which will help to better understand the evolution of the most massive objects in the universe.
The Magazine Phys.org On May 21, he reported the discovery of the exoplanet TOI-199b, whose atmosphere is rich in methane. Astronomers have studied the space object and found out that it is a gas giant, the size of which is comparable to Saturn, and the temperature is similar to Earth.
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