ScienceDaily: Space & Time News

Using a newly developed model, astrophysicists present a new theory to explain fast blue optical transients, a new class of transients that has boggled researchers since their discovery in 2018. In the new study, astrophysicists find that FBOTs could result from the actively cooling cocoons that surround jets launched by dying stars.

Intermediate-mass black holes are notoriously hard to find but a new study indicates there may be some at the center of dense, star clusters located throughout the universe. A study now sheds new light on when and where black holes of about 100-100,000 solar masses could form and how they came into being.

A team of astronomers has observed a new type of stellar explosion -- a micronova. These outbursts happen on the surface of certain stars, and can each burn through around 3.5 billion Great Pyramids of Giza of stellar material in only a few hours.