Cosmic Dust Survives In Huge Supernova – Watch NASA’s Visual
Fox News reports that when dying red giant stars throw off material, dust particles will form. These are later destroyed by supernova blast waves which will move through space at over 6,000 MPS, says NASA.
As you all know, supernova explosions are some of the most powerful events that can take place in our Universe.
These can trigger a brightness which is the equivalent to the light coming from billions and billions of individual stars, according to NASA’s reports.
The blast coming from these explosions can destroy just about everything that comes in its path.
Now, Fox News reports that “Observations from SOFIA — a Boeing747SP jetliner that’s been modified to carry a 106-inch diameter telescope — tell a more mysterious story and show more than ten times the dust expected.”
Observing Supernova 1987A
The brand new study is based on scientific observations of Supernova 1987A – one of the biggest ones in 400 years.
It has a distinctive set of rings that are part of a cavity that’s formed in an earlier explosion phase of the star’s evolution.
The research was published in a new issue of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
An unexpected dust population
NASA says that dust particles might be forming in the blast’s wave wake and this offers astronomers brand new insights into the ways in which the dust moves through space.
This can be from the growth of existing particles, or it can come from new dust that’s being formed.
“We already knew about the slow-moving dust in the heart of 1987A,” Mikako Matsuura, a senior lecturer at Cardiff University, in the United Kingdom, and the lead author on the paper, told NASA.
He continued and told the space agency that “It formed from the heavy elements created in the core of the dead star. But the SOFIA observations tell us something new about a completely unexpected dust population.”
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