Powerful Supernova May Be Related To Death Spasms of First Stars

necro81 writes "The New York Times is reporting on a discovery from a team of UC Berkley researchers, who may have discovered the brightest stellar explosion ever observed. Observations of the cataclysmic explosion of a 100- to 200-solar-mass star began last September, based on data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The researchers believe that the explosion is similar to the death spasms of the first stars in the universe. The super-massive star's collapse is believed to have been so energetic as to create unstable electron-positron pairs that tore the star apart before it could collapse into a black hole — seeding the universe with heavier elements."

Comments

Re:Time-lapse video?

[ls -la]

As far as I can tell from the articles, most of the observation was through means other than the optical spectrum pictures you're looking for (e.g. x-ray and IR pictures, spectroscopy, etc.). In fact, this supernova was so far away (240 million light years) that I'm not sure they could see it through optical telescopes. Most of a supernova's radiation (especially in something this violent) is emitted in the gamma ray range.

Here's the NASA page.

[u-bend]

Here's the NASA article about it.

Re:Oddity

[Orange Crush]

There is no such thing as synchronicity in this universe. Cause travels at the speed of light (or slower), gravity and relative velocity alter time and quantum states are ambiguous until observed. That star has a high probability of already having gone supernova, but this is meaningless in our frame of reference until the event is observable.

Re:Time-lapse video?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Indeed. The best images are from the Chandra X-ray observatory. They have some animations here.