A New Kind of Supernova Explosion has been Discovered: Fast Blue Optical Transients

For the child inside all of us space-enthusiasts, there might be nothing better than discovering a new type of explosion. (Except maybe bigger rockets.) And it looks like that’s what’s happened. Three objects discovered separately--one in 2016 and two in 2018--add up to a new type of supernova that astronomers are calling Fast Blue Optical …