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RandomFactor [soylentnews.org] writes:

According to this article [space.com]

A weirdly bright and brief blast dubbed "The Cow," which researchers first spotted last June, was likely generated by a newborn black hole or superdense stellar corpse called a neutron star, a new study reports.

Raffaella Margutti, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern University in Illinois states that

Based on its X-ray and UV [ultraviolet] emission, 'The Cow' may appear to have been caused by a black hole devouring a white dwarf

The explosion was designated variously ATLAS18qqn, SN 2018cow, AT2018cow and is pictured here [wikipedia.org]. It was inevitably nicknamed "The Cow" and is relatively nearby at only 200 light years (3.102e+16 Ice Hockey rinks) distance and with brightness between 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than a typical supernova.

The Cow supernova

intrigued researchers from the start. It was incredibly bright — 10 to 100 times brighter than typical supernovae — and surprisingly brief, fading away after a mere two weeks or so.

The results of the new study [arxiv.org] on The Cow were announed on January 10th in a news conference during the 233rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Seattle.

Several other teams announced results concurrently and conclusions differ [arxiv.org].

The properties of The Cow strain nearly all models we have tried to devise to explain it," Daniel Perley, an assistant professor of astronomy at Liverpool John Moores University in England, said in a different statement [caltech.edu].

Hopefully the debate will be put out to pasture soon.

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