What could the ‘missing stars’ be?

Here are some of the potential explanations

Failed supernovae

A failed supernova is a star – one far more massive than our Sun – which dies by collapsing into a black hole after a brilliant but short-lived explosion that could easily be missed. However, they’re so rare that the VASCO hunt is unlikely to have detected even one in our galaxy.

Flaring dwarfs

Low-mass dwarf stars shine dimmer than our Sun, but have strong magnetic fields that can produce huge stellar flares. If the earlier survey caught stars in the act of flaring, it might explain some apparent ‘disappearance’, but it seems unlikely to account for them all.

New astrophysics

Perhaps we don’t understand the universe as well as we think, and the missing stars are revealing aspects of stellar evolution that we’ve missed. These might even be due to an incomplete picture of fundamental physics, which governs the nuclear reactions that cause stars to shine.

Interstellar beacons

Many candidates appear red. They could be red stars, but could perhaps also be lasers, tightly aligned packets of light deliberately beamed across the galaxy, perhaps for interstellar communication. The disappearance could be due to it switching direction, or being switched off.

Alien construction

A really advanced alien civilisation could cause stars to disappear in a number of ways – perhaps blocking out their light by surrounding them with Dyson spheres or similar structures, or even deliberately destroying them to extract energy or for other unknown purposes.