WASHINGTON, Feb 12 (Reuters) – The formation of a black hole can be quite a violent event, with a massive dying star blowing up and some of its remnants collapsing to form an exceptionally dense object with gravity so strong not even light can escape. But, as new observations indicate, the process sometimes can be a rather quiet affair.Researchers have tracked a big and bright star that in its death throes virtually vanished from view as it apparently morphed into a black hole without exploding as a supernova. It is now detectable only because of a subtle glow caused by leftover gas and dust heating up while being sucked inward by the newborn black hole’s irresistible gravitational pull.The star, named M31-2014-DS1, resided in the Andromeda Galaxy, a Milky Way neighbor, about 2.5 million light-years from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).AdvertisementAdvertisementM31-2014-DS1 may offer the best evidence yet of black hole formation without a supernova, the researchers said. They tracked how the star was luminous in four decades of observations before 2014, then brightened in 2015 before almost disappearing from view, consistent with transforming into a black hole.”This provides observational evidence of black hole formation in real time, suggests that many black holes may form without supernova explosions and shows that stars with masses as low as about 13 times that of the sun can form black holes,” said astrophysicist Kishalay De of the Flatiron Institute and Columbia University in New York, lead author of the research published on Thursday in the journal Science …
