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Stephen Smartt

Stephen Smartt

Professor of Astrophysics, Queen's University Belfast

Appears in 1 story

Notable Quotes

We have almost no detections of stars above a birth mass of 17 solar masses, and these should be the brightest ones, the easiest ones to find on images.

Stories

The silent deaths: stars that collapse into black holes without exploding

New Capabilities

Pioneer of supernova progenitor studies

For decades, astronomers assumed all massive stars end their lives in spectacular supernova explosions. But a quiet revolution in observations has revealed that some stars simply vanish—collapsing directly into black holes without the cosmic fireworks. Two confirmed cases, one in the Fireworks Galaxy and another in Andromeda, now suggest that 10 to 30 percent of massive stars may meet this silent end.

Updated Jan 21