ASTRONOMERS have witnessed a supernova giving birth to another celestial body – either a black hole or a neutron star – for the first time.
Radio emissions from supernova 1986J, an exploding star 30 million light years away, were picked up 18 years ago. Now Michael Bietenholz of York University in Toronto, Canada, and his colleagues have spotted an emerging source of radio waves near its centre (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1099460).
The source could be a dense, spinning ball of subatomic particles called a neutron star, or it could be something more exotic. The original star is thought to have been more…
