“There’s a New Beast Out There” –Enormously Powerful Anomaly Found in Tiny Galaxies

“The Cow and CSS161010 were very different in how fast they were able to speed up these outflows,” said Northwestern astrophysicist Raffaella Margutti, about a bright burst in a tiny galaxy 500 million light years away from Earth, a new astronomical transient in the universe, that launched 1 to 10 percent the mass of the sun at more than half the speed of light — evidence that this is a new class of transient. CSS161010 is vastly faster, heavier and brighter at radio wavelengths than its mysterious predecessor, AT2018COW (“The Cow” above). “But they do share one thing — this presence of a black hole or neutron star inside. That’s the key ingredient.”

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