{"id":231225,"date":"2026-02-12T22:09:57","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T04:09:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/a-giant-star-vanished-and-scientists-think-a-black-hole-is-to-blame"},"modified":"2026-02-12T22:09:57","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T04:09:57","slug":"a-giant-star-vanished-and-scientists-think-a-black-hole-is-to-blame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/a-giant-star-vanished-and-scientists-think-a-black-hole-is-to-blame","title":{"rendered":"A Giant Star Vanished, And Scientists Think a Black Hole Is to Blame"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-giant-star-vanished-and-scientists-think-a-black-hole-is-to-blame.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>One of the brightest stars in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/hubbles-2-5-billion-pixel-mosaic-reveals-andromeda-in-breathtaking-detail\">Andromeda galaxy<\/a> quietly collapsed into a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/black-holes\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_self\">black hole<\/a> without any of the fanfare of a spectacular supernova.<\/p>\n<p>What makes this startling discovery even more remarkable is that the first signs of the transformation were recorded back in 2014 \u2013 data that is crucial for understanding the different ways <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/black-holes\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_self\">black holes<\/a> can form after the death of a giant star.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis has probably been the most surprising discovery of my life,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/news.columbia.edu\/news\/scientists-capture-clearest-view-yet-star-collapsing-black-hole\">says astronomer Kishalay De<\/a> of Columbia University in the US, who led the research. \u201cThe evidence of the disappearance of the star was lying in public archival data, and nobody noticed for years until we picked it out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the brightest stars in the Andromeda galaxy quietly collapsed into a black hole without any of the fanfare of a spectacular supernova. What makes this startling discovery even more remarkable is that the first signs of the transformation were recorded back in 2014 \u2013 data that is crucial for understanding the different ways [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}