100 times bigger than the Sun: scientists have revealed the most striking supernova explosion in history

At birth this star was at least 100 times larger than the mass of the Sun / cfa.harvard.edu

The SN2016aps supernova explosion, recorded on February 22, 2020, 4.5 billion light-years from Earth, has been identified as the most surprising in the history of astronomical observations.

Science Alert writes about this with reference to the researchers’ conclusions.

According to scientists, this star was the brightest of all supernova explosions. Furthermore, it also has certain characteristics that make this star rare compared to other similar explosions.

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Since SN2016aps were discovered in space in 2016, astronomers have been closely monitoring how the space object disappears over time, a process that is still ongoing.

The total kinetic energy of the explosion reached the energy of the famous 1998 supernova, but the brightness was 40 times higher.

“At birth, this star was at least 100 times larger than the mass of the Sun,” astronomers explain.

At the same time, scientists believe that SN2016aps is unlikely to have caused such a large explosion.

“We have determined that in recent years, before it exploded, the star released a huge layer of gas while pulsing strongly. The collision of fragments with this projectile led to the incredible brightness of the SN2016aps explosion. It added a bush to the fire,” he explained. the University of Birmingham.

The researchers have also found high levels of hydrogen, which is surprising, since massive stars generally expel most of the hydrogen before the explosion. But there is an answer to this puzzle: SN2016aps was once two separate stars that eventually merged.

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