WASHINGTON—Supernovas are not always so super. These explosions that mark the death of a star often are spectacularly energetic. But once in a while they are a complete dud.
Scientists on Wednesday detailed one of the duds—a massive star that had so much of its material siphoned off by the gravitational tug of a companion star in a stellar marriage called a binary system that by the time it came to explode at the end of its life cycle it could barely manage a whimper.
Its eventual explosion was so tame, in fact, that the collapsed star—now an incredibly dense object called a neutron star—remains in a docile circular orbit with its companion. A more powerful explosion at the very least would have resulted in a more oval-shaped orbit and even could have sent the star and its companion hurtling in opposite directions….