Dozens of stars have vanished from the sky in a cosmic mystery that has boffins scratching their heads.
The reasons why remain unclear, but the puzzling phenomenon was first highlighted in 2019. Stars can dim, like the famous Betelgeuse, or explode in a brilliant supernova, but they don’t usually just disappear without a trace.
Now, a new study has sought to find out why, with some interesting theories floated. The snappily-named Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO) project compared images taken in the late 1940s with those from a 2010s survey.
READ MORE: British Airways dump ‘transparent’ uniforms which let pervy passengers ogle cabin crew
Click for more of the latest news from the Daily Star
Using advanced software, researchers identified around 150,000 potential light sources that had apparently vanished over the decades. They then sifted through the images, narrowing them down to 100 promising candidates of stars that genuinely had disappeared.
According to IFL Science, the theories why included gravitational lensing. That is when massive objects warp space-time and magnify distant light, meaning bursts of light might have appeared earlier but don’t any more.
Even closer moving objects such as asteroids could also be responsible, researchers said. Another intriguing theory — discovered from looking at a binary star system at the edge of the Milky Way known as VFTS 243 — suggests some stars might not supernova at all but could collapse into black holes instead.
(Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA)
“Were one to stand gazing up at a visible star going through a total collapse, it might, just at the right time, be like watching a star suddenly extinguish and disappear from the heavens,” said expert Alejandro Vigna-Gómez.
“The collapse is so complete that no explosion occurs. Nothing escapes and one would see any bright supernova in the night sky.
”Astronomers have actually observed the sudden disappearance of brightly shining stars in recent times. We cannot be sure of a connection, but the results we have obtained from analysing VFTS 243 have brought us much closer to a credible explanation.”
For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletter by clicking here.
This post was originally published on here
