"When a star bigger than our sun reaches the end of its life, it leads to an extremely bright and violent explosion called a supernova explosion. These explosions are so bright that they can outshine the luminosity of an entire galaxy briefly and release a large number of neutrinos to leave behind a neutron star. The stellar mass ejected during the explosion has a velocity of thousands of kilometers per second but is not always equally distributed. This asymmetry leads to large-scale asymmetries in the remnants of the explosion, which has been observed for neutron stars. This asymmetric ejected mass causes a recoil to the neutron star called a natal kick, which causes it to move at high speeds throughout a galaxy. Natal kicks have been previously seen for neutron stars but not for black holes. Black holes are formed when, instead of an explosion, a dying star collapses in on itself. So, we come to the question posed by the researchers: Could natal kicks also play a role in the formation of black holes?"
A new study in Physical Review Letters explores the conditions of black hole formation from dying stars, particularly the role of neutrino-induced natal kicks in the formation process.
