A giant star may have destroyed itself in one of the rarest explosions

Posted by wglb 8 days ago

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https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.16487

Comments

Comment by chasil 7 days ago

There is a wiki on pair-instability supernovas. Antimatter (in the form of positrons) is a key factor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair-instability_supernova

Comment by pfdietz 7 days ago

It's my understanding the general mechanism of core collapse involves the adiabatic constant of the material, gamma. This is the exponent in the relation P V^(gamma) = constant.

For a normal, non-relativistic gas in which the particles have no internal degrees of freedom, gamma is 5/3. As a gas becomes more relativistic, and as photon pressure becomes more important, gamma declines toward 4/3.

For gamma = 4/3, a self-gravitating gas will be marginally stable: the energy needed to compress a sphere of the gas will be equal to the gravitational potential energy liberated by the compression. So, any effect that pushes gamma below 4/3 makes it unstable against collapse.

In a conventional core collapse SN this is photodissociation of nuclei, where energy gets soaked up in breaking apart nuclei into alpha particles and then free nucleons. In a pair-instability SN, this is increasing conversion of photons to electron-positron pairs.

Comment by ben_w 7 days ago

My favourite kind of supernova, due to their absurdity.

Comment by chasil 7 days ago

A hypernova is an even larger star that is theorized to end its life due to photodisintegration rather than pair instability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photodisintegration#Hypernovae

Comment by pfdietz 6 days ago

The temperature involved for this is well above that needed for production of electron-positron pairs, so one may ask why that doesn't happen. I think it's because the cores of such stars are dense enough the electrons are degenerate, and there simply isn't "room" for new electrons to be added at an energy that would make pair production possible.

BTW, I don't think largeness is needed for photodisintegration to occur; this should happen even in garden variety type-II SN.

Comment by conception 6 days ago

Lay article on this supernova https://phys.org/news/2026-05-giant-star-destroyed-universe-...

Comment by dominictorresmo 6 days ago

I don't know much about those things, but if we're seen it now it's because it happens thousands of years ago, right?

Comment by zuminator 6 days ago

This one was 1.3 billion light years away. Technically that is thousands of years ago. 1,300,000 thousands, approximately.

Comment by Stolpe 6 days ago

It's 1.3 billion light years away according to the article, so yeah... 1.3 billion years ago. (plus 3 years since it was observed in 2023)

Comment by conception 6 days ago

1.3 billion actually.

Comment by ck2 7 days ago

I just want to live long enough for space telescopes to evolve exponentially to observe kilonovas in the visual spectrum

I mean laser interferometers are an amazing advancement but just imagine seeing an earth-sized chunk of gold pop out of a kilonova (probably not my lifetime but eventually a human will see it happen)

Thank goodness this administration did not frack with Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, I thought the name alone would make them cancel it or rename it after him, wait maybe I shouldn't even mention that idea...

* https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telesc...

Comment by throwaway-away 7 days ago

Check out the aragoscope [1]. It's not planned, but we would already have the technology as it doesn't rely on fragile and heavy lenses to be sent in orbit.

If you look at image 17 you can see that a simulated aragoscope that is in our technical reach could already resolve the Jupiter moons from almost 23 light years away. I hope as well that we will have something comparable while I am still around.

[1] https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/2014_phase_i...

Comment by Levitating 7 days ago

Wow, that would be absolutely amazing.

For reference, there are 103 known main sequence stars within 20 light years.[1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars

Comment by ck2 6 days ago

the 100 meter "starshade" probably has much higher chance to be built/launched next decade

it will block overwhelming starlight physically so objects around them can be imaged by existing telescopes

rather simple/clever, some things you just cannot do digitally

* https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02787-9

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdTsaf68wd8

Comment by vitally3643 7 days ago

Well I mean I would expect that the gold would be fired off in all directions as more of an atomic mist than a chunk

Comment by 7 days ago

Comment by sourcegrift 7 days ago

He has stopped Mtf trans females from competing in female sports thus pretty much segregating 10s of millions of Americans and people of color.

I don't think it's possible to do worse, even for him.

Comment by LearnYouALisp 6 days ago

Response to supposed facts: "Carefully, he's a hero"

Comment by wglb 8 days ago

Arxiv reprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.16487

Comment by tomhow 7 days ago

Thanks! We've added it to the thread header.

Comment by smnplk 7 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by bebeidjdkrjrjr 7 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by wewtyflakes 7 days ago

I know you are a bad-faith bot account, so this is not posed to you.

I am wondering why there are so many of these accounts popping up. They seemingly only exist to antagonize. What do their operators get out of that?

Comment by junon 7 days ago

What do 14 year olds get out of trolling anything? A cheap grin and something to do on an after school evening.

Comment by conception 6 days ago

And nation state actors actively attempting to disrupt western society.

Comment by junon 6 days ago

They're not doing that from HN by posting edgy comments. We're not a high priority, they target social media with billions of users.

Comment by nutjob2 7 days ago

Welcome to the general public. You'll meet all the people you go to great lengths to avoid in the real wold, online.

Comment by detritus 7 days ago

heh, funny you say that - I just yesterday almost bit at some obvious Nego-Trolling on here and remembered "Just don't engage".

Some people, for some reason at certain points in their life, just want to shit on other people's stuff, any way that they can, for... reasons.

I mean, clearly it's not to make themselves feel better, because how on Earth could that work?

There's no value in engaging, in any way whatsover. Sadly there's very little that can be done to prevent that form of human behaviour, without otherwise souring the experience for the generality.

*shrug, whatchagonnado?

Comment by nutjob2 7 days ago

> I mean, clearly it's not to make themselves feel better, because how on Earth could that work?

When you're really, really angry you look for an outlet. Some people kick the dog, some abuse their gf/wife/kids, others troll on online forums.

Comment by detritus 7 days ago

Yeah, I get that. But does it actually make them feel better?

What do they say about sugaring trauma?

Comment by AnimalMuppet 7 days ago

It can make them feel better by giving them a chance to look down on someone else. (The "looking down" doesn't have to be the content of the post - the act of trolling is a form of looking down on someone.)

Comment by scns 7 days ago

> It can make them feel better by giving them a chance to look down on someone else.

That's the idea but it does not work. Self esteem is still negative afterwards

Comment by MadnessASAP 7 days ago

Whether or not it works isn't what matters. It's whether or not the perpetrator, consciously or not, believes it works.

Comment by hulitu 7 days ago

may have. Or not.

Comment by timwis 7 days ago

Dark Forest theory, anyone?

Comment by groos 7 days ago

It was a supergiant, hence died at a young age, and unlikely to have evolved life of any kind in its system.

Comment by tgrowazay 7 days ago

That’s what Singer’s civilization wants you to think before they send a Photoid or Dual-Vector foil (but later would require a supervisor’s approval which is a PITA)

Comment by dotancohen 7 days ago

  > before they send a Photoid
Plenty of services require a Photo ID nowadays.

Comment by chasil 7 days ago

Pair-instability can only happen in low-metalicity surroundings.

The big bang created hydrogen, helium, and small amounts of lithium. Any higher elements are created by stars, and a significant presence of those "metals" will take a star down a different path than pair-instability.

Low-metalicity environments are not likely to be friendly to life.

Comment by veltas 7 days ago

I like to think there's a solid argument against dark forest that even if you can destroy other intelligent systems, then hidden intelligent cautious systems may exist and see evidence of what you've done, so there's a potential consequence to destroying every intelligent system you identify.

And then also (maybe this is absurd) isn't there something intrinsic in intelligence to want to avoid conflict and desire peace?

Comment by m4rtink 6 days ago

Once a civilization reaches a certain tech level, it can do interstellar travel & by the time you find about it due to light speed delay, it might be far too late to strike - not to mention what size & tech level they might be by the point your first strike wave arrives given the time scales of sub light travel.

So it might be better to use the tried and tested terrestrial nuclear MAD doctrine & rather doe careful diplomacy with any newcomers, like a bunch of psychos each having a full arsenal of planet killing weapons (because that's what any sufficiently advanced civilization is).

In short - rather than Dark Forrest I imagine a harmonious if not utopic galaxy teaming with varied life that is on the first glance peaceful and cooperating.

With the occasional bunch of start systems evaporating once in a while, but we don't talk about those.

Comment by whizzter 6 days ago

Doesn't that validate the dark forest theory?

A more powerful hidden intelligent system will probably fear a medium power intelligent civlization that sets out to destroy "newcomers" as a civilization that might cause their destruction so the best course of action would be to destroy the medium power one before they become as powerful.

Once multiple destructions have occured, every sentient party capable of becoming aware will fear the others.

Comment by fasteo 7 days ago

Spontaneous combustion[1] at scale

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_combustion