A gargantuan explosion ripped apart a star perhaps 150 times more massive than our sun in a relatively nearby galaxy in the most powerful and brightest supernova ever observed, astronomers said on Monday. And there is one such star in our own Milky Way galaxy that appears to be on the brink of dying in just such a supernova.
The exploding star's dramatic death may have come in a rare type of supernova reserved for "freakishly massive" stars that astronomers had speculated about but never previously witnessed.
