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Isn't that what every supernova does?
by squigz 3y ago
Isn't that what every supernova does?
- djbusby 3y agoAnd it's super awesome every time!
- shiroiuma 3y agoUnless you're living on a planet orbiting that star...
- jsbisviewtiful 3y ago“Shattered” seems like an odd way of describing it but at some level… sure.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> “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.
- pangeorg 3y agoAstrophysicist here :) You are correct in some way to say that the star "squeezes" the core. During the evolution of massive stars, say stars roughly 8 times as massive as our sun, the core grows to a point where it just cannot support itself. It collapses and in consequence triggers the type 2 supernova. Another commenter already mentioned correctly that the remnant of the explosion is typically a neutron star or a black hole. The asymmetries seen in the gaseous remnant are caused by the explosion, which typically is highly asymmetric for stars of larger mass (https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.02420 https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.02420, https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.09707 https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.09707) CasA was a IIb explosion and the neutron star was found in '99 and graciously called 'CXOU J232327.8+584842'. If you want to know more theory about supernovae I highly recommend https://arxiv.org/abs/1206.2503 https://arxiv.org/abs/1206.2503 and others :)
- zethus 3y agoSome stars survive supernovae, and are known as zombie stars [1]. One believed example is SN2012Z [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_star [2] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ac3bbd/pdf https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ac3bbd/...
- hinkley 3y agoI 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?
- altcognito 3y agoYeah the wording is awkward; the supernova isn’t some sort of force of nature separate from the star that came and ripped it apart, it was the star ripping itself apart. These are some of the first images we’ve probably inside the after effects due to the nature of the scope.
- chasil 3y agoType 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.