In December 2024, astronomers watched a star around 25 times the mass of our sun die in a blaze of glory. Located one billion light-years from Earth, SN 2024afav was a prime example of a superluminous ...

An illustration of two stellar-mass black holes merging in the accretion disk of an active galactic nucleus. (Shu-Rui Zhang) ...

Astronomers have identified the first clear evidence of a magnetar forming during a superluminous supernova, offering new insight into some of the brightest explosions in the universe.

New research suggests that the highly magnetized remnants of stars are responsible for powering some of the universe’s most brilliant supernova explosions ...

Sixteen years ago, theoretical astrophysicists at UC Berkeley and elsewhere proposed that highly magnetized, spinning neutron stars — magnetars — were the power source behind some superluminous ...

A recent SETI Institute study suggests that space weather could blur and weaken extraterrestrial radio signals long before they reach us.

Researchers found a magnetic star core acting as a high speed engine to power a record breaking luminous supernova.

An international team from China and Italy has reported a possible cosmic encore to the landmark 2017 multi-messenger ...

Two microscopic grains collide and produce a tiny spark. This phenomenon may have provided the energy to kick off life on Earth. But if these solid particles have the same composition, what factor ...

The discovery of a newborn magnetar inside a distant supernova helps explain why some stellar explosions shine far brighter ...

Astronomers have identified the birth of a magnetar, a hyper-magnetized neutron star, by detecting a subtle warping of space-time predicted by Einstein’s general relativity. The discovery came from ...

Their formation has been an object of debate, but new observations confirm the lead hypothesis: they are the product of incredibly bright supernovae. The rest of this article is behind a paywall.