...and creates glorious stellar art
If stars were like humans, when they reached the end of their lives they would slow down, gradually shine a little less bright and then die quietly tucked away in a cosmic nursing home. Fortunately (for those of us who can enjoy the results) stars die in a slightly more spectacular fashion From white dwarfs and red giants, black holes to pulsars, a star’s death can result in an entire pantheon of interstellar weirdness. The beautiful image to right is the result of star that exploded as a supernova more than 5,000 years ago. The explosion created an artistic masterpiece painted with stellar gases and launched a cosmic bullet and an epic cannonball.
Degenerative dwarfs used as standard candles to gauge the inflation of the cosmos? This might sound like a bizarre case of exploitation from the pages of the casebook of the Mad Hatter’s lawyer (12b Looking Glass Lane, Wonderland) but, in reality, scientists have been using this technique for years to measure the expansion of the universe.