The Most Mysterious, Volatile Star in the Universe?
“The luminous blue variable is a supermassive, unstable star,” said Yan-Fei Jiang, a researcher at the Flatiron Institute in New York City. Unlike our own smaller and steady-burning Sun, luminous blue variables (LBVs) have been shown to burn bright and hot, then cool and fade, only to flare up again. Because of its mercurial behavior, conventional one-dimensional models have been less than adequate at explaining their special physics.