Astonishing Image Of Shockwaves From A Dying Star

angkor writes: "This is worth a look: "A new image from the Hubble telescope shows a pair of supersonic shock waves created when gas from a collapsing star hits surrounding clouds of cosmic gas and dust." And an enlarged image for your desktop."

Comments

Re:Supersonic?

[stevelinton]

Yes, really. There is a cloud of (very diffuse) dust and gas there, and, provided you look over large enough distance scales, it makes sense to talk of sound waves and the speed of sound in this gas. Over small scales, this breaks down because individual atoms can don't collide enough.

A wave of more gas (also very diffuse) is hitting this cloud, faster than the speed of sound in the cloud, and pushing this "shock wave" in front of it.

No smell in space?

[GreyPoopon]

Luckily, in space, there is no sense of smell.

Would somebody care to explain this? Perhaps I don't understand how smell works, but I never thought that oxygen was a required factor. If you could overcome that fact that you'd either freeze to death or some other nasty cold-vacuum related fate if you exposed your nose in space, should you still be able to pick up the displeasure of sulfur gas?