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Last year scientists witnessed the dazzling death of a most unusual star.
The resulting supernova was about 100 times brighter than a typical supernova. Stan Wooseley, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California at Santa Cruz, had an idea about what might have caused the dramatic demise. He and his colleagues published the results in the November 15th issue of the journal Nature.
First you need a star that’s at least 90 times the mass of our sun. As the star nears death, the core gets super-hot. Gammy-ray radiation transforms into pairs of electrons and their anti-matter counterparts, positrons. The core becomes so unstable that pressure drops, and the star contracts. It collapses, then quickly expands—then explodes. But the star is so big, the explosion does not destroy the entire star.
The process happens again, and the second explosion collides with the remains of the first. This produces an increasingly radiant fireworks display. The pulsings could theoretically continue up to six times. Who said you only live—or die—once?
—Cynthia Graber
