Astronomers Witness Flattest Space Explosion on Record

Astronomers have discovered a new class of objects called Fast Blue Optical Transients (FBOTs), with the prototype being the peculiar stellar explosion known as AT2018cow or simply "the cow". The explosion was found to be extremely flat, spreading through a thick disk, with a thickness about one-tenth of the radius of the disk a handful of days after the explosion was recorded. The polarization of light allowed the team to measure the shape of the explosion, revealing that the flat disk was roughly the size of the Solar System at that point. This discovery challenges our preconceptions of how stars might explode in the Universe and could help shed more light on these mysterious explosions.