One of the biggest and brightest types of stars known is the “blue hypergiant,” a young and extremely massive star. Dimensions and luminosity can be damned impressive, with individual stars visible across many millions of light years. Such stars have very short lifespans, just a few million years. They either promptly supernova, or transition to red supergiants and then supernova. The end state of such stars after going kerblooey is often a black hole.

So it’s kinda odd when such as star just up and vanishes.

A Massive Star Has Disappeared From a Distant Galaxy, And No One’s Sure Where It Went

Between 2001 and 2011, this star visible in a dwarf galaxy some 75 million years away was repeatedly observed. But in 2019, it was apparently utterly gone. Had it gone supernova it doubtless would have been noted. One suggestion is that it just slipped into black hole status without first going to the bother of exploding; this would seem to indicate that it must have been *reeeeaaaaalllllly* massive (on the order of 100 solar masses) in order to simply collapse under its own weight.

The universe is magnificent in it’s majesty, scope and potential for terror.

Woo!