Fast blue optical transients, or FBOTs are energetic explosions in space, but they are also extremely rare. In fact only 5 have ever been detected to date, but the most recent one that occurred around 180 million light-years away is even stranger. That’s because it didn’t explode spherically like, well, every other explosion ever. This on seems to have exploded in a 2D disk.
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00:00Fast blue optical transients, or FBOTs, are energetic explosions in space, but they're
00:08also extremely rare.
00:10In fact, only five have ever been detected to date, but the most recent one that occurred
00:14around 180 million light years away is even stranger.
00:18That's because it didn't explode spherically like, well, every other explosion ever.
00:22It seems to have exploded in a 2D disk.
00:25Lead researcher on the project, astrophysicist Justin Mond, had this to say about it.
00:29Very little is known about FBOT explosions, but they just don't behave like exploding
00:33stars should.
00:34They're too bright and they evolve too quickly.
00:36Put simply, they're weird, and this new observation makes them even weirder.
00:40While they are a bit baffled by the discovery, they do have a couple of guesses about why
00:44an aspherical explosion could have occurred.
00:46The stars that exploded could have formed a disk already ahead of the explosion, spiraling
00:51around one another ahead of a collision like this.
00:53Or the core of the star could have collapsed, forming either a matter-swallowing black hole
00:58or even a neutron star.
00:59The explosion was also ten times brighter than your average supernova as well, leaving
01:03scientists scratching their heads from several angles.
01:06With Mond adding, what we know for sure is that the levels of asymmetry recorded are
01:10a key part of understanding these mysterious explosions, and it challenges our preconceptions
01:15of how stars might explode in the universe.