Hubble Spots Star Explosion Astronomers Can't Explain

schwit1 writes: The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted the explosion of a star that does not fit into any theory for stellar evolution. "The exploding star, which was seen in the constellation Eridanus, faded over two weeks — much too rapidly to qualify as a supernova. The outburst was also about ten times fainter than most supernovae, explosions that destroy some or all of a star. But it was about 100 times brighter than an ordinary nova, which is a type of surface explosion that leaves a star intact. 'The combination of properties is puzzling,' says Mario Livio, an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. 'I thought about a number of possibilities, but each of them fails' to account for all characteristics of the outburst, he adds." We can put this discovery on the bottom of a very long list of similar discoveries by Hubble, which this week is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its launch.

Comments

More things in space

[CaptQuark]

It just means there are more things in space that we don't fully understand yet. But every discovery adds knowledge so we can understand it better.

~~

Re:More things in space

[BVis]

Dude sounds like a crank. For example: this article raises a number of red flags for me. One, he references his own work as the sole basis for a conclusion, and two, he whines like a 5 year old:

Since, as usual, none of the above authors reference the voluminous evidence that quasars are intrinsically redshifted objects ejected from lower redshifted galaxies, there is very little chance of conventional astronomy correcting a huge error in their fundamental assumptions.

Waah! The mean nasty mainstream astronomers won't completely change the field because I said so! Waaah!

It's obvious.

[jtownatpunk.net]

A wizard did it.

only one explanation...

[ecloud]

It must have been a champagne supernova in the sky.