A Team Of Astronomers With The Help
of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), have observed a new type of stellar explosion
These Outbursts Happen On
the surface of certain stars, and can each burn through around 3.5 billion Great Pyramids of Giza of stellar material in only a few hours.
explains Simone Scaringi
“We have discovered and identified for the first time what we are calling a micronova,”
He Added
“The phenomenon challenges our understanding of how thermonuclear explosions in stars occur. We thought we knew this, but this discovery proposes a totally new way to achieve them,”
Micronovae Are Extremely Powerful
events, but are small on astronomical scales; they are much less energetic than the stellar explosions known as novae
Micronovae are similar
explosions that are smaller in scale and faster, lasting just several hours.
The team first came across
these mysterious micro-explosions when analyzing data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).