Content tagged "supernova".
5 items (5 articles, 0 stories)
The gold atoms in that ring on your finger couldn't have been made inside a star like the Sun. Elements heavier than iron only form in bulk during the brief, violent instant when two neutron stars collide. On August 17, 2017, humanity caught that event as light, 130 million light-years away. The gold you're wearing is debris from a star that died long ago.
In June 2025, a star exploded 40 million light-years away. The first thing astronomers did was pull up old photos. Hubble had missed the progenitor star entirely, but Webb's infrared images had it all along. The reason: the star was hiding in its own dust.
Researchers melted 300 kilograms of Antarctic ice core spanning 80,000 years and found iron-60 — a radioactive element that can only be born in a supernova explosion. It turns out the region of space the solar system is currently passing through is the remnant of a star that once exploded.
More than 650 new sensors have been added to IceCube, the massive detector buried in Antarctic ice. Here's the story of how humanity dares to 'catch' neutrinos — particles that pass through everything — and what secrets we're hoping to uncover.
Starting in 2026, Rubin Observatory photographs the entire southern sky every 3–4 days and fires off around 100,000 change alerts each night. For the first time, astronomers have a systematic record of everything that flickers, explodes, or moves when no one is watching. Here's what that means for astronomy.