The universe is full of insanely strong objects that continually push our understanding of the
physical world and its limit. It seems that every year scientists will find more
record-breaking objects that seem to dwarf what was previously known with the Advent of new more
powerful technology astronomers will continue to search the skies to find these incredible objects
a super luminous Supernova surprisingly close to home in the year 2015 a team of astronomers from
Kavli Institute for Astronomy and astrophysics at Peking University we're scanning the night sky
when they stumbled across a curious point of light upon later inspection this point of light turned
out to be an extremely rare case of supernova referred to as super luminous supernovae this
special type of supernova releases an enormous amount of energy and shines much brighter than
any other Supernova in the sky and it turns out that this super luminous Supernova are now named
assassin 15 LH only sits 3.8 billion light years away making it one of the closest Super luminous
supernovae that astronomers have ever been able to witness it also turned out to be the brightest
object ever found in the universe shining hundreds of billions of times stronger than the Sun
but the team led by astronomer Subo Dong weren't looking for super luminous supernovae as they were
exploring the night sky it just happened to be a great surprise how did the team discover
this supernova while using the Assassin twin 14 centimeter telescopes positioned in the
mountains of central Chile the Supernova just sort of appeared as a DOT of Light It wasn't
until additional telescopes were able to turn their gaze towards the spot were they able to
get an idea of what they had really found within seven days of the discovery another telescope in
Chile the 2.5 meter Dupont telescope delivered the electromagnetic spectrum of the Supernova after
seeing it dong recalled when we saw the Spectrum we were baffled it didn't look like any Supernova
we had seen so what made this Supernova so special and how did it compare to the typical supernova
the differences of supernova and the super luminous variety super Novae occur when a
massive star has run out of fuel and reached the end of its life the star's outer layers of
material will be blasted out into space while the dense core begins to collapse in on itself there
can be several results from a supernova event if the star's core was massive enough it will fully
collapse and form a black hole but if the core does not generate enough gravitational force to
fully collapse it will instead form one of the densest objects in our universe a neutron star
typically supernovae are easy to pick out because of how bright they appear compared to the average
star just how powerful is this event assassin 15 LH shown a staggering 200 times brighter than the
average Supernova and while the average Supernova releases the same amount of energy as the sun will
during its 10 billion years lifetime assassin 15 LH released more energy than the sun would produce
during 10 of its lifetimes making this the most powerful Supernova ever discovered by astronomers
if we compare this Supernova directly to the sun this Supernova shines 570 billion times brighter
when astronomers have tried to answer the question of what kind of stars and scenarios may
be responsible for events like this they have been at a loss for the most part but that doesn't mean
that they don't have their own ideas and theories about the life events of assassin 15 LH that led
up to its super luminous supernova what was unique about this star to create such a special supernova
the 10 meter South African large telescope spends some time observing assassin 15 LH and when they
released their observations they included the elemental signatures of the Supernova which gave
astronomers a look at its chemical composition from these signatures the team of astronomers were
able to tell that this Supernova was a hydrogen poor super luminous supernovae which is one of
the two types of these brilliant explosions when the Spectrum lacks signs of the element hydrogen
based on all the information that is available at this time Dong's team has raised what they think
is the best hypothesis to answer what led to this incredible event when the parent star of assassin
15 LH reached the end of its life the star blasted out its outer layers of gas while the core
collapsed to form a neutron star but not just any neutron star astronomers believe that it formed
a special kind of neutron star that generates incredible magnetic forces known as a magnetar
a magnetar consists of a hyper-dense rapidly rotating magnetized core that can complete upwards
of a thousand revolutions every second eventually this magnetar reached the end of its life and in
a process that scientists don't fully understand yet it exploded in a powerful violent explosion
that we can recognize as a super luminous Supernova while this hypothesis is plausible
it challenges the boundaries of what science considers physically conceivable at this time
some astronomers believe that this is the result of a supermassive star-going Supernova as Paula
matsali from the Liverpool John Moore's University astrophysics Research Institute said he would be
a challenge to get a magnetar to that level of brightness as the star would have to convert its
rotational energy into light with nearly perfect efficiency while remarking that it is still not
an impossible thing to happen so if magnetars are behind some super luminous supernovae how
many of them do astronomers think they will find in the cosmos how many magnatars are out there
astronomers aren't sure if the death of magnetars are the Catalyst for super luminous supernovae but
finding more of these special neutron stars will help astronomers uncover the Mysteries
Behind These supercharged events magnetars are an interesting object that can erupt in violent
electromagnetic events without so much as a warning and then just as abruptly shut down
compared to ordinary neutron stars the magnetic field produced by magnetars is at least a thousand
times stronger equal to about a million billion Gauss or 100 trillion standard refrigerator
magnets could this supercharged magnetic field contribute to the super Luminosity of a supernova
and if so what are the processes that lead up to and control these massive explosions
astronomers hope that when they can find more magnetars and study them they will
be able to put many of the unanswered questions about magnetars to rest but
no one knows how long it will take to find enough magnetars to discover these truths
so far only 29 magnetars have been found within the Milky Way and a total of 31 ever so if this
Supernova is confirmed to have formed a magnetar that number will grow what can astronomers hope to
learn from assassin 15 LH because the brightness of assassin 15 LH pushes on the upper limit of
physical Theory astronomers are rushing to try to explain and understand this incredible event
in addition to its Luminosity this event also occurred in a galaxy larger and brighter than
the Milky Way which through scientists for a loop since the majority of super luminous supernovae
occur in smaller dimmer galaxies where the rate of star production is much higher all
of this added together has made assassin 15 LH into a majorly rare event that astronomers will
have to study in the hopes of pinning down its identity thanks for watching let us know
what kind of extreme Cosmic event you find the most interesting see you next time on Matter