Thursday, October 13, 2022

Supernova Early Warning System?

 We have now developed a system to detect when a red supergiant is going to go supernova.

And it's familiar to everyone who knows about tsunamis.

You know. When the ocean goes away, run, because it will come back.

Turns out that right before a star explodes, it dims so drastically from released material that it might actually disappear.

What we don't yet know is how long before it explodes, except that it appears to be less than a year.

But hopefully enough time to point our telescopes in the right direction.

Of course, if you're near the star when this happens, you may want to, well.

Run.

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