Astronomers may have observed the birth of a black hole in the Andromeda Galaxy, as a 13-solar-mass star, M31-2014-DS1, mysteriously brightened, dimmed, and then vanished without a supernova explosion.

The discovery, led by Columbia University’s Kishalay De using NASA’s NEOWISE data, suggests that relatively lightweight stars can quietly collapse into black holes, challenging previous assumptions about black hole formation.

Follow-up observations from Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope confirm the star’s disappearance and reveal a faint infrared glow from leftover dust and gas swirling around the newborn black hole.

The infrared signal is expected to fade over decades as material slowly accretes, with X-rays potentially detectable once the surrounding gas clears, Space.com has reported.

This finding provides a new method for identifying silent black hole formations by looking for brief infrared flares before a star collapses.