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Space

Black holes formed from dark matter could be making dead stars explode

By Chelsea Whyte

6 December 2019

Supernova

A black hole in a white dwarf star might prompt it to explode like this

NASA

Dead stars are exploding all around the universe and we aren’t really sure why – but now a pair of researchers think that minuscule black holes made from dark matter might be to blame.

Burnt out stars known as white dwarfs can ignite into a type Ia supernova when they gather matter from a neighbouring star or merge with other astronomical objects. Exactly how this works is still an open question.

“The dirty secret of supernovae is that in the computer models, we can’t ever…

Article amended on 16 December 2019

We replaced the image with the more relevant one above; and we corrected the composition of white dwarfs,

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