Submission + - Most Powerful Star Explosion Observed
necro81 writes: The NY Times is reporting a discovery from a team of researchers about observations of the cataclysmic explosion of a 100- to 200-solar-mass star — the brightest stellar explosion ever observed. The researchers believe that the explosion is similar to the death spasms of the first stars in the universe. Rather than create a black hole, the super-massive star's collapse is believed to have been so energetic as to create unstable electron-positron pairs that tore the star apart before it could collapse into a black hole — seeding the universe with heavier elements.
