'ElectroWeak' stars: they're out there!

[Rosanella]

Some Physicists now believe of the existence of 'electroweak' stars. These are the ones that collapse into a black hole after reaching maturity (all nuclear fuel has been burned up).

So, we thought we already knew a lot about stellar evolution, right? Well, let's get back to the drawing board

Read further here, left-click once--->'Electroweak' stars predicted - physicsworld.com

[Ben Ritchie]

So, we thought we already knew a lot about stellar evolution, right?

We do

Well, let's get back to the drawing board

Not really - these things, if they exist (and it's very speculative stuff) are going to be very rare endpoints of certain high-mass stars.

[Rosanella]

We do

Not really - these things, if they exist (and it's very speculative stuff) are going to be very rare endpoints of certain high-mass stars.

Does it mean that's not quite proven yet?

[Ben Ritchie]

Does it mean that's not quite proven yet?

What's not proven? Looking at the paper itself

[0912.0520] Electroweak stars: how nature may capitalize on the standard model's ultimate fuel

it's pretty speculative and I wouldn't consider it proven at all (note that the abstract ends with "This is long enough to represent a new stage in the evolution of a star if stellar evolution can take it there" - my bold - which means they don't know either). It's posted on hep-ph (High Energy Physics - Phenomenology) which is pretty theoretical stuff which is seldom much troubled by what the universe actually does

Stellar evolution as a general subject is pretty well understood and a paper like this isn't "back to the drawing board". But, saying that, the end results of high-mass star evolution are not yet well understood. If you look at something like the magnetar CXOJ164710.2-455216 it's clear that stars with initial masses around ~50-60x solar can (in at least some cases) shed virtually all their mass before or during a supernova and form a neutron star where you might conventionally expect a black hole. Dynamic masses have been determined for even more massive stars (approaching ~100x solar) and the end state of these stars is unclear - the traditional core-collapse supernova scenario may not apply and instead you get something called a pair-instability supernova, which although rare may have been observed (e.g. SN2006gy), and may totally disrupt the star without leaving any compact remnant. So there are certainly unanswered questions here.