Astronomers studying a powerful gamma-ray burst (GRB) with the Gemini South telescope, operated by NSF’s NOIRLab, may have detected a never-before-seen way to destroy a star. Unlike most GRBs, which are caused by exploding massive stars or the chance mergers of neutron stars, astronomers have conclu
. If two such stellar remnants form a binary system, they also can eventually collide. New research, however, points to a long-hypothesized, but never-before-seen, fourth option.
Astronomers studying a powerful gamma-ray burst with the International Gemini Observatory, operated by NSF’s NOIRLab, may have observed a never-before-seen way to destroy a star. Unlike most GRBs, which are caused by exploding massive stars or the chance mergers of neutron stars, astronomers have concluded that this GRB came instead from the collision of stars or stellar remnants in the jam-packed environment surrounding a supermassive black hole at the core of an ancient galaxy.
In normal galactic environments, the production of long GRBs from colliding stellar remnants such as neutron stars and black holes is thought to be vanishingly rare. The cores of ancient galaxies, however, are anything but normal and there may be a million or more stars crammed into a region just a few light-years across.
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