Scientists Might Have Witnessed a Black Hole Being Born for the First Time Ever, After Mysterious ‘Cow’ Blast

The bright object dubbed the Cow was first discovered in the ATLAS survey (top panel). Astronomers around the world pointed their telescopes to follow the Cow. The bottom panel displays the telescopes in the GROWTH network that were used to study the mysterious cosmic explosion. From left to right and top to bottom: Liverpool Telescope; Himalayan Chandra telescope in India; Lulin Observatory in Taiwan; Mount Laguna Observatory; Palomar Observatory; Mitsume Observatory in Japan; and the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory in space. NASA, Caltech/Palomar, ATLAS team, Daniel Lopez/IAC

Humans may have been able to capture and observe the birth of a black hole or a neutron star in real time for the very first time, astronomers said at a recent national astronomical meeting in Seattle, referring to an extremely bright flash in space first spotted in 2018 that has since become one of the most baffling and most studied cosmic events in history.

The mysterious and spectacularly bright glow was first spotted on June 16, 2018, by ATLAS telescopes in Haleakala and Maunaloa in Hawaii. The event garnered international attention but also left astronomers perplexed.