![\"Scientists](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/star-disappear-black-hole.jpg\")
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\t\t\t Keith Miller\/Caltech\/IPAC \u2013 SELab\n\t<\/p>\n
The end of a star\u2019s life can be an extremely violent event. Once it runs out of fuel, its core collapses, and if its original mass is large enough, it can erupt in a supernova, a runaway nuclear fusion event that can release as much energy as the Sun will produce over its entire lifespan of roughly ten billion years. The remains are either a neutron star, an immensely dense lump of matter, or a black hole.<\/p>\n
Now, scientists believe they may have observed a star dying in real time. They watched as the star, once one of the brightest in the Andromeda galaxy, quietly winked out of existence.<\/p>\n
Columbia University astronomer Kishalay De and his colleagues analyzed 15 years\u2019 worth of data collected by NASA\u2019s NEOWISE spacecraft as part of an effort to measure changes in the amount of infrared radiation millions of stars emit over the years. <\/p>\n
One star, dubbed M31-2014-DS1, stood out like a sore thumb \u2014 brightening in 2015, fading roughly a year later, and eventually disappearing from view, even in optical light.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis star used to be one of the most luminous stars in the Andromeda galaxy, and now it was nowhere to be seen,\u201d said De in a statement<\/a>. \u201cImagine if the star Betelgeuse suddenly disappeared. Everybody would lose their minds!\u201d<\/p>\n In a research article<\/a> published in the journal Science, the team suggested that the dimming of the star was the result of a failed supernova.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a dying massive star, the core collapses to form a compact object,\u201d the article reads. \u201cSimultaneously, the outer layers can be ejected at high speed, which is observed as a supernova.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTheory predicts that sometimes the ejection speed is too low to escape the gravitational field, so the outer layers fall back over several years, producing no supernova and a more massive compact object,\u201d the researchers wrote.<\/p>\n The star in question may have failed to eject its envelope, resulting in a \u201cstellar-mass black hole\u201d and causing it to \u201cdisappear\u201d from plain sight.<\/p>\n The conclusion challenges prevailing theories that stars need to have a certain mass to explode in a supernova and turn into a black hole.<\/p>\n \u201cObservations like these are starting to finally change this long-held paradigm that it\u2019s only the very massive stars that turn into black holes,\u201d De told Space.com<\/a>. If confirmed, the finding means that \u201cthere are many more black holes out there than what we\u2019ve anticipated so far,\u201d De added.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an intriguing observation, particularly because these events are far dimmer and harder to observe than supernovas, some of the most energetic events in the universe, sometimes causing the dying star to outshine even its host galaxy, as De explained to NPR<\/a>.<\/p>\n There has been one other instance of a star mysteriously disappearing, a \u201cfailed supernova candidate\u201d dubbed N6946-BH1 that \u201cunderwent an outburst in 2009 and has since disappeared in the optical,\u201d according to a 2021 paper<\/a>. But given the even longer distances involved, plenty of questions remain.<\/p>\n And not everybody agrees that suddenly dimming stars are a sign of a failed supernova. Other scientists argue that disappearing stars could be caused by two stars merging, with the resulting cloud of gas and dust obscuring them.<\/p>\n To gain more clarity, more research is needed.<\/p>\n \u201cFundamentally, the only way to clearly answer this either way is that one thing distinguishes the black hole case from any other scenario,\u201d Ohio State University astronomer Christopher Kochanek, who coauthored the 2021 paper, told NPR, \u201cand that is that death is forever.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUltimately, it needs to fade to black,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n