A group of scientists under the leadership of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology disclosed the riddle of the origin of the bright blue outbreak, which was observed in 2018 in the Galaxy in 200 million light years. This light signal marked as AT2018COW or Cow has properties uncharacteristic for supernova, since the flash was faster and brighter. The results of the study published in the Nature Astronomy magazine suggest that the source of radiation was still a dying star.
Scientists have found that in addition to the outbreak of AT2018COW, it eats high-energy X-ray pulses with a frequency of 225 hertz, arising every 4.4 milliseconds within 60 days. Based on the frequency of impulses, scientists tied them with an object with a diameter of no more than a thousand kilometers and weighing less than 800 masses of the Sun. This corresponds to either a black hole or neutron star.
Thus, in the Universe AT2018COW was a side effect when turning a star into a black hole or neutron star. The formed object continued to absorb the surrounding material remaining from the original star that he released a huge amount of energy in the form of a powerful explosion, which is a hundred times brighter typical supernova.
AT2018COW refers to FBOT (Fast Blue Optical Transient) – Blue optical transition processes, and scientists are known only three phenomena. In fact, it is a heavy duty explosion visible in optical, x-ray and radars. It was believed that none of the most famous astrophysical processes could generate such a quick outbreak, the rate of exploration of which was estimated at 42 thousand kilometers per second.