[HN Gopher] JWST Captures Image of Supernova That 'Absolutely Sh...
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JWST Captures Image of Supernova That 'Absolutely Shattered' a Star
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 110 points
Date : 2023-12-14 16:19 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| squigz wrote:
| Isn't that what every supernova does?
| djbusby wrote:
| And it's super awesome every time!
| jsbisviewtiful wrote:
| "Shattered" seems like an odd way of describing it but at some
| level... sure.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _"Shattered" seems like an odd way of describing it_
|
| Would love for an astrophysicist to pine in. But my
| understanding is supernovae are usually balanced enough to
| squeeze their stars' cores. This appears to have been
| unbalanced such that the core was "broken" instead of
| uniformly compressed.
| zethus wrote:
| Some stars survive supernovae, and are known as zombie stars
| [1]. One believed example is SN2012Z [2]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_star
|
| [2]
| https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ac3bbd/...
| squigz wrote:
| Neat! Thanks for sharing! Space is crazy :)
| falcrist wrote:
| Here I was thinking "zombie star" was another term for ANY
| stellar remnant like a white dwarf or neutron star.
| hinkley wrote:
| I thought, surely they mean a supernova obliterated a companion
| star, but you're right. They're talking about the exploding
| star.
|
| Is this noteworthy because we've seen it, rather than that it
| exists? How many novae cores have we imaged before?
| chasil wrote:
| Type 1A supernovas are completely destroyed in the process of
| their explosions.
|
| The others usually retain their core, either as a neutron star
| or the final collapse to a black hole.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It's kind of fun to think that at any moment something might pop
| and our entire solar system would disappear in a blink of an eye.
| lostapathy wrote:
| Our sun isn't massive enough to ever go supernova.
| TheEzEzz wrote:
| Supernova are powerful enough that even a star in a different
| solar system going nova can kill you, if it's a "nearby"
| system. But I believe there aren't any stars close enough
| that would go supernova any time soon.
| rnk wrote:
| It's always the one you don't expect that gets you.
| jsbisviewtiful wrote:
| A good premise for a sci-fi series: In the distant future,
| a large fleet of earth's best and brightest travels the
| stars while desperately trying to invent Earth's last
| ditch-effort to save its 12 billion inhabitants from a
| soon-to-be cataclysmic, near-earth supernovae: FTL travel.
| After decades of progress finally nears fruition, the fleet
| permanently loses contact with earth; humanity's home Solar
| System's remnants lost to the beautiful, nightmare... The
| fleet of 80,000 now works to save itself, the last of
| humanity.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-Earth_supernova
|
| It wouldn't wipe out the solar system, but might have harmful
| impacts on our biosphere.
| strictnein wrote:
| Reporting from two hours in the future (relatively): hasn't
| happened yet.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| If the sun went pop, the Earth wouldn't notice for more than
| eight minutes, and Neptune not for 4 hours.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| If the cause of the pop is moving at the speed of light too.
| But if it wasn't we might get an early warning.
| cosmotic wrote:
| Links to the full res images (under Download Options):
| https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2023/149/01H...
| amelius wrote:
| Where can I download the time-lapse video?
| omgJustTest wrote:
| It's streaming live right now!
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Where!?
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| Right, big explosion, easier to see. Typical solar toxicity. I
| can't wait for it to detect a gentle supernova, gently whisping a
| luliby to its exoplanets.
| strictnein wrote:
| Was wondering what the width of the image we're seeing is, so I
| did some quick googling:
|
| > The expanding cloud of material left over from the supernova
| now appears approximately 10 light-years (3 pc) across from
| Earth's perspective
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiopeia_A
| MKais wrote:
| > Chandra's study revealed the amounts of different elements
| produced by the explosion. The supernova has spat out 10,000
| times the mass of the Earth in sulfur, 20,000 times Earth's mass
| in silicon, 70,000 Earth masses of iron and a million Earth
| masses of oxygen.
|
| Mind went supernova
| JohannesH wrote:
| Wow it is absolutely fascinating and awe-inspiring. Anybody know
| what the blob (looks like wavy gold foil) in the bottom right of
| the picture is?
| JohannesH wrote:
| Should have read the description.
|
| > There are also several light echoes visible in this image,
| most notably in the bottom right corner. This is where light
| from the star's long-ago explosion has reached, and is warming
| distant dust, which is glowing as it cools down.
| humble_ant wrote:
| Fair to say this happened 11,000 years ago?
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Equally fair to say it's happening right now depending on your
| frame of reference.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| I'm looking at older pics of Cassiopeia A from the Hubble
| telescope, and it looks substantially different. How much time
| needs to pass before a supernova is visibly different? My
| instinct was that something like this would change over thousands
| of millions of years, but I'm guessing that's wrong
| crtified wrote:
| How quickly do the (damaging to nearby solar systems etc) effects
| of a supernova propagate through space, in relation to the speed
| of light?
|
| Or, to put it another way, could we detect the damaging effects
| of a nearby supernova expanding towards us _before_ those effects
| actually hit us? And if so, by what factor?
| Scaevolus wrote:
| The radiation propagates at light speed, but the harmless
| neutrinos reach us a few hours before the potentially dangerous
| X-rays and gamma rays. A supernova would have to be within
| roughly 160 light years to be damaging to Earth.
|
| https://news.fnal.gov/2019/03/waiting-for-neutrinos/
|
| https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/safe-distance-from...
| deskamess wrote:
| > The star collapses in an explosion
|
| Can anyone explain the above phrase?
| its_ethan wrote:
| This might be helpful:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova#Core_collapse
|
| I'm not an expert, but an analogy here could perhaps be if you
| drop a cup of water on the floor (assuming it doesn't break)
| some of that water is going to rebound on itself/the cup, and
| will splash upwards. That would be gravitational potential
| energy being converted to kinetic energy, causing material to
| be ejected.
|
| With stars, there is a TON of gravitational potential energy,
| and so when it's converted to kinetic energy during a collapse,
| you "explode" the lighter weight outer layers of the star away
| from the more dense core. Some of the stars core remains, and
| can become either a neutron star or a black hole.
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(page generated 2023-12-14 23:00 UTC)