[HN Gopher] Astronomers Witness a Dying Star Reach Its Explosive... ___________________________________________________________________ Astronomers Witness a Dying Star Reach Its Explosive End Author : worldvoyageur Score : 56 points Date : 2022-01-09 19:44 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (keckobservatory.org) (TXT) w3m dump (keckobservatory.org) | marcodiego wrote: | Where are the actual images? The animation | https://player.vimeo.com/video/658748207?h=ce918acdf2&title=... | is beautiful, but it is not what I came there for. | hutzlibu wrote: | They probably do not look so stunning yet and are more of a | scientific value. | LegitShady wrote: | https://web.archive.org/web/20220107114736/https://iopscienc... | | images available with the actual paper here | | https://web.archive.org/web/20220107115445im_/https://cfn-li... | | pre explosion images | awb wrote: | Thanks! | | To OC: Skimming the paper, I think a lot of the "witnessing" | is in the form of numerical data. | sharkweek wrote: | Two of my cousins (twins, as an anecdotal fun fact) are | both astronomers. I remember one of them explaining to me | how little of their job is actually looking at badass | pictures of space objects but instead staring at numbers | representing badass happenings in space. | | The fun part to me is when they explain what they're seeing | in the numbers in layperson's terms. One of them published | on evidence of "star theft" when two galaxies pass | near/through one another, how the composition of some stars | signal they once belonged to a different galaxy than their | current home. Fascinating to think about cosmic events as | large as two galaxies passing near/through one another. | goldenkey wrote: | Welcome to the Matrix, Neo. | BluSyn wrote: | Website got hugged to death? | | Archive link: | https://web.archive.org/web/20220109194733/https://keckobser... | mungoman2 wrote: | If you want to get excited by this kind of thing, I can really | recommend Big Bang by Simon Singh. It's a great intro and made me | go from "meh" to "wow" about cosmological things. | booleandilemma wrote: | The Code Book by him is also very good. I guarantee it'll have | you implementing your own classical ciphers :) | gammarator wrote: | Full paper is here: | https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ac3f3a | | (AAS journals are now completely open access, so no paywall.) | xqcgrek2 wrote: | Clickbait has infected astronomy it seems | freeslave wrote: | If the star is 120 million light-years away, does that mean this | explosion actually happened 120 million years ago? | pc86 wrote: | Yes | ehsankia wrote: | Would the fact that space between here and there is | stretching during that time impact that? | asxd wrote: | Always blows my mind that because light travels through space, | you can literally see into the past. Imagine, way way down the | line, eventually meeting a civilization from a far away planet, | and they could potentially show you actual photographs of | Pangaea. | xwdv wrote: | More than Pangea... if they mastered the ability to resolve | vast distances they could show us the herds of dinosaurs | roaming the world, and then their total extinction, a | Timelapse of the rise of human civilization, ancient Egypt | and the Roman Empire, if only we could truly meet a | civilization way down the line, or perhaps they would come to | meet us, given their obsession. | JoeAltmaier wrote: | Perhaps if there is a large reflector in space somewhere, | that light could be passing back by us today! If we had a | large enough collector, we could create an image. | tegeek wrote: | Unfortunately, that is not possible. Earth isn't a star and | not big enough to provide this much data even outside of our | Solar System, let alone millions of light years away. | tegeek wrote: | From a philosophical point of view, an event happens at the | point when observed by an observer. For us, Humans on earth, | this supernova happens now and not 120 million years ago. | LegitShady wrote: | I think even philosophy can withstand knowing the speed of | light and incorporating it into the framework of 'when things | happened' so that it agrees with our understanding of the | universe instead of not. | boulos wrote: | It's too bad the rendering didn't include timestamps. For | example, is that a year of data in 25s of rendering, or the last | few months? | tablespoon wrote: | > It's too bad the rendering didn't include timestamps. For | example, is that a year of data in 25s of rendering, or the | last few months? | | Per the OP: | | > However, this novel detection of bright radiation coming from | a red supergiant in the final year before exploding suggests | that at least some of these stars must undergo significant | changes in their internal structure that then results in the | tumultuous ejection of gas moments before they collapse. | | I think this is probably the period from 5s to 12s in the | animation. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-09 23:00 UTC)