Friday 13/February/2026 – 05:13 PM
Astronomical observations revealed that a star turned into a black hole without exploding, which may provide the best evidence so far of the possibility of black holes forming without massive stellar explosions.
A star was observed turning into a black hole without a massive explosion
According to what was published by The Sun website, researchers tracked a large, bright star that almost disappeared in the final moments when it apparently turned into a black hole without a massive stellar explosion. It can no longer be observed except through a faint glow resulting from the heating of the remaining gas and dust as they are attracted inward under the influence of the enormous gravity of the nascent black hole.
The star (M31-2014-DS1) was located in the Andromeda Galaxy, adjacent to the Milky Way, about 2.5 million light-years from Earth. A light-year is the distance that light travels in one year, amounting to 9.5 trillion kilometers. The researchers tracked how the star remained bright during four decades of observation and observation until 2014, then its brightness increased in 2015 before it almost faded from attention, consistent with its transformation into a black hole.
Astrophysicist Kishalay Dee of the Flatiron Institute and Columbia University in New York, who led the research team published Thursday in the journal Science, said: This indicates that a number of black holes may form without massive star explosions, and it also shows that stars with a mass approximately 13 times the mass of the Sun can turn into black holes.
He added that scientists have known for more than 50 years that black holes exist, but they still have very limited observational evidence about how stars turn into black holes… Thus the discovery provides an important insight into this process, and the star came into existence with a mass at least 13 times greater than the mass of the sun. During its relatively short life of 15 million years, it lost about 60 percent of its mass due to its strong stellar winds.
The explosion of a large star usually leaves behind an ultra-dense object called a neutron star, but it is not as dense as a black hole. A black hole may also result from massive stellar explosions, depending on the star’s mass and other factors, but this is difficult to confirm through astronomical observations.
Dee said: During massive stellar explosions, the massive star exhausts its nuclear fuel, collapses from within, and forms a neutron star for a short period. This collapse generates a shock wave.
As for the star (M31-2014-DS1), the shock wave resulting from the collapse of the core failed to generate enough energy to explode the star. We call this a failure in the massive stellar explosion, said Andrea Anthony, an astrophysicist at the Flatiron Institute and co-author of the study. The researchers hope to know how common black holes form in this quiet way, and they have already observed another star that appears to have turned into a black hole without exploding.
