Kilonova: Dead-Star Crashes May Spark Mysterious Cosmic Explosions

These images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope reveal a new type of stellar explosion produced by the merger of two compact objects: either two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole. 

The galaxy in the center of the left image produced the gamma-ray burst, whose lingering effects were visible on June 13 but had faded by July 3. 

Credit: NASA, ESA, N. Tanvir (University of Leicester), and A. Fruchter, Z. Levay (Space Telescope Science Institute), A. Levan (University of Warwick)

Cataclysmic crashes involving black holes and ultradense neutron stars may explain the briefest of the most powerful explosions in the universe, scientists say.

NASA scientists are calling the new type of short, but intense, cosmic collision and conflagration a "kilonova," an explosion so powerful it is 1,000 times stronger than a typical star explosion, called a nova.

Such events have long been predicted by astronomers, but never seen until now, researchers said. The discovery could shed light on the origin of heavy elements such as gold and platinum, they added.

Gamma-ray bursts are the most intense outbursts ever detected, giving off as much energy in an instant as our sun will beam out during its entire 10-billion-year lifetime.

A nearby burst directed at Earth could easily cause a mass extinction, researchers say