A shocking supernova refuses to die.
This exploding star, named iPTF14hls, has erupted continuously for the last three years, and it may have had two other outbursts in the past, astronomers report in the Nov. 9 Nature. Such a tireless supernova could be the first example of a proposed explosion that involves burning antimatter in a stellar core — or it could be something new altogether.
“A supernova is supposed to be a one-time thing — the star explodes, it’s dead, it’s done, it can’t explode again,” says astrophysicist Iair Arcavi of the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It’s the weirdest supernova we’ve ever seen … It’s like the star that keeps on dying.”