Brief by Shorts91 Newsdesk / 12:24pm on 13 Feb 2026,Friday Science
Calcutta-born astrophysicist Kishalay De, a St James' School alumnus now at Columbia University, has solved a cosmic mystery by confirming a massive star's silent collapse into a black hole without a supernova explosion. The star, M31-2014-DS1 in the Andromeda galaxy, vanished after fading for nearly a decade, bypassing the explosive death typically expected from massive stars. De's team analyzed archival telescope observations spanning four decades, finding the star briefly brightened in infrared light around 2014 before rapidly disappearing. This confirms a decades-old prediction that some stars can skip the supernova stage. The research, published in Science journal, suggests such quiet collapses may represent an alternative stellar evolution pathway previously overlooked by astronomers. (PC: astro.columbia.edu)
