Tracking a Black Hole’s Formation
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Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA’s Universe of Learning partners: Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Video imagery:
- Animation of a supernova: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
- Artist’s concept of massive star core collapse: Keith Miller, Caltech/IPAC – SELab
- Illustration of the NASA WISE spacecraft: NASA/JPL-Caltech
- Black hole science visualization: NASA/GSFC, Jeremy Schnittman
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[00:00:00.66] A white line moves through colorful images of space.
[00:00:05.11] Title: News from the Universe.
[00:00:11.50] Text: March 19, 2026. Tracking a Black Hole's Formation.
[00:00:19.56] When a massive star burns through all its fuel, its light can go out with a bang or a whimper.
[00:00:28.37] Without any remaining fuel, the core of the dying star collapses, which sends out a shock wave. If this shock is powerful enough, the star's outer layers are ejected in a supernova explosion.
[00:00:43.72] However, scientific theory predicts that if the shock wave is weak, gravity will prevail in holding on to the outer layers of the star, which then collapse onto the core and form a black hole.
[00:00:58.87] That is what astronomers think happened with the star M31-2014-DS1, located in the nearby Andromeda Galaxy.
[00:01:12.01] NASA's NEOWISE mission, with supporting evidence from other telescopes, shows the star suddenly brightened in infrared light in 2014, then faded completely in visible light by 2023.
[00:01:28.81] Astronomers think the temporary infrared brightening was caused by the star shedding its outer layers as it ran out of fuel, but the layers were not completely ejected in a supernova.
[00:01:44.32] Instead, the former star is now likely a black hole, with its material trapped forever in a super-dense core that has such strong gravity it emits nothing, not even light.
[00:01:59.99] Astronomers will use this event as a test case as they find other potential black-hole births and discover more about the formation of these extreme cosmic objects.
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[00:02:17.01] This news was brought to you in part by IPAC in Pasadena, California.