These exploding stars use all of their energy to emit one last strong beam of highly energetic radiation - known as a gamma-ray burst - before they die.
Until now, it was thought all gamma-ray bursts were followed by a radio afterglow - a premise that a team of Australian astronomers of the Centre for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO) at Curtin University and the University of Sydney originally set out to prove correct.
Lead researcher and Curtin research fellow Dr Paul Hancock said that after studying an ultra-sensitive image of gamma-ray bursts with no afterglow, we can now say the theory was incorrect and our telescopes have not failed us.
It allowed for the stacking of 200 separate observations on top of each other to re-create the image of a gamma-ray burst in much better quality - yet, no trace of a radio afterglow was found.
Click here to know more about the research and its results.
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