Subj : needle in a billion haystacks
To   : All
From : Skuz
Date : Thu Aug 31 2017 15:40:27

Solving a 600-Year-Old Cosmic Mystery

Astronomers have found the stars responsible for an explosion recorded by
Korean astronomers in 1437 A.D.

On the night of March 11, 1437 A.D., in what is now modern-day Seoul, a new
star appeared in the sky, seemingly out of nowhere. The newcomer shone for 14
days before fading into the darkness. Korean astronomers noted the mysterious
star and its brief stint in the sky in their records. Centuries later, modern
astronomers studying these records determined that what the Koreans had seen
was a cosmic explosion called a nova. Novae occur in two-star systems, when a
dead star, known as a white dwarf, starts eating away at its companion, a
star like our sun. The white dwarf slowly builds a layer of hydrogen stolen
from the other star over tens of thousands of years, and then ejects it all
at once, producing an eruption of light 300,000 times brighter than the sun
that can last for weeks.

Michael Shara and his researcher colleagues have spent the last nearly 30
years looking for the star responsible for this nova. In a new paper
published Wednesday in Nature, they say they've finally found it.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/a-cosmic-whodunit/538482/?s
ingle_page=true

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