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astronomy2 years ago•3 min saved

"The Cow": A Bafflingly Flat Space Explosion Defies Explanation

An explosion in a galaxy 180 million light-years away, named AT2018cow, has challenged our understanding of how stars die, appearing to represent the flattest explosion of its kind on record. The explosion belonged to an extremely rare class of cosmic blasts known as fast blue optical transients (FBOTs) and seems to have only exploded out sideways, resulting in an eruption shaped like a disk. The research has been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

via ScienceAlert|

#astronomy #asymmetry #at2018cow

space2 years ago•2 min saved

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.

via IFLScience|

#astronomy #fbots #polarization-of-light