The mystery continues: In 1952, a trio of stars suddenly disappeared. They did not appear again
The Trinity That Disappeared. Credit: Palomar Observatory/Solano, et al. (2023).
Sometimes things happen in space that baffle the minds of astronomers. An excellent example is the disturbing case of the missing trio of stars. One summer evening 71 years ago, on July 19, 1952, at the Palomar Observatory in California, they were routinely photographing the night sky. Part of the project was the search for planets, so they photographed the same parts of the sky several times in a row, with a time gap.
Palomar Observatory. Credit: Gerard T. van Belle, Wikimedia Commons.
At about 20:52 local time, they took a picture of a certain part of the sky where three bright stars were close together, more prominent than the surrounding stars. In the next image, taken at approximately 21:45, i.e. not even an hour after the previous image, the mentioned trio of conspicuous stars are missing. As if they had completely disappeared without a trace. Since then they have never appeared again.
It’s a scandal, of course. Stars can’t just disappear if we understand physics and the universe. And certainly three stars cannot disappear at the same time in less than an hour. It makes no sense at all. Try to think of a phenomenon in which three stars could disappear without a trace, such as explosions, for example?
Mysterious disappearance after less than an hour. Credit: . Credit: Palomar Observatory/Solano, et al. (2023).
The stars in question had an apparent magnitude of around 15th mag. Subsequent observations of the scene would track the stars if their apparent magnitudes had decreased to 24th mag. This would correspond to roughly a 10,000-fold drop in brightness. But the astronomers found nothing. As for possible explanations, there are some ideas. But none of them is completely convincing.
1. Maybe it wasn’t three stars. But by one. It requires a very unlikely construction. In that case, it could be a star that has suddenly brightened. At the same time, however, a star-sized black hole would have to pass between us and the star in question, which, although not visible by itself, would create a gravitational lens that would multiply the image of the star for a short time.
2. Maybe it wasn’t the stars. But about planets or similar objects. They could be much closer objects from the far reaches of the Solar System. According to the calculations, in that case they would have to be no more than 6 AU apart, they should not be more than 2 light years from the Sun, and most importantly, something would have to cause them all to temporarily brighten at the same time.
3. Maybe they weren’t space objects. There is also the possibility that the mentioned three stars may have been created by radioactive dust from nuclear tests. Palomar is not too far from the deserts of New Mexico, where such tests were conducted. But again, it would have to be a very unlikely combination of circumstances. Will we ever know what it was about in 1952? We’ll see. For now, the mystery remains.
Video: Palomar Observatory
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2023-10-26 15:59:53
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