This is John Batchel.

Conversation with the astronomer Kishelay Day of Columbia University.

He and his team have discovered, have revealed a supernova that begins with a much smaller sun, star, than was heretofore assumed.

13 solar masses.

It was assumed you needed to be much higher to turn into a supernova

and then turn into a black hole.

This very likely increases the audit when and if it happens

of black holes in the immediate region of the Milky Way,

but globally, no, cosmically, much larger.

Kishlai Day describing what they discovered and how they want more information,

what makes it happen.

Much more of this tonight.

Professor Kishelay Day, Columbia University.

Supernovas, black holes, and what?

More of this tonight?

So that's a good question.

I think it's still quite up in the air. that's primarily because what we know is that stars in this mass range, 13 solar masses or so, we do know that some of them do explode, but clearly this one did not. So what that means is that whether a star decides to explode or not explode might not be uniquely determined

by its mass. There might be other processes, maybe processes that are somewhat chaotic even,

in that you can't predict it beforehand of whether a star is able to explode at the end of its

life. So, you know, to make a prediction like that, one would have to assume certain things about what mass

ranges to start explode, starts explode in, but this discovery really makes that much more

complicated because it shows that stars at very similar masses can either explode or not

...