For the first time ever, astronomers have directly witnessed the birth of a super dense object far outside of our galaxy — the rise of either a black hole or a collapsed star in real time. Up until now, we’ve only ever seen these objects many years after they’ve first formed. But now, we can study this creation in its early days, giving us novel insight into what these mysterious phenomena look like when they first come into existence.
The discovery, nicknamed “The Cow,” came as a delightful surprise during a routine survey of the night sky. Last year, a group of astronomers using the Keck Observatory’s twin telescopes in Hawaii were looking for transients — astronomical explosions that suddenly appear with a flash in the sky and then...