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View submission: Ask Anything Wednesday - Physics, Astronomy, Earth and Planetary Science
The formation of a black hole would probably destroy any existing planetary system
There are scenarios where the BH forms without a supernova. With enough mass you can get things to collapse fast enough to avoid getting a SN. That doesn't mean there's *zero* emission while the star collapses - you would still get some outer layers blown off and an increase in luminosity just due to the initial collapse - but you avoid the supernova itself, so more possible for planets to stick around without being vaporized.
I'm not sure what characterizes "fast enough" - maybe you avoid creating the proto-neutron star at the core that you usually create in a core-collapse SN? Without the proto-NS, infalling material won't have anything to bounce off of, so you wouldn't get the initial outward shock of the SN. Or maybe the burst of neutrinos created in the process start out gravitationally bound? If a good fraction of the neutrinos are bound rather than flying out of the star, then you might not get enough energy out of the core to sustain the SN. The exact mechanism of supernova formation isn't 100% understood (in particular, we aren't sure about how you get from the initial "bounce" to the full SN, as a lot of calculations seem to suggest that the shock should stall out before it can produce the SN).
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