Astronomers recently watched a massive star die, but fail to explode as a supernova. Instead, it collapsed directly into a black hole, slowly expelling its turbulent outer layers in the process. This ...
It’s “common knowledge”—and the scare quotes should be a warning—that the sun is an average star. But it’s not, and in fact it’s not even close: The sun is in the top 90th percentile of stars by mass.