Astronomers have spotted a distant star that seems to have exploded twice. The blast may be the first-ever known “superkilonova” — a chimera of a supernova and a neutron star merger, researchers report in the Dec. 20 Astrophysical Journal Letters.
“The reason it would be amazing if true is that this would be producing objects we’ve never seen before in the universe,” says astronomer Cole Miller of the University of Maryland at College Park, who was not involved in the study.
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