Timeline of the disappearance of a distant star

What if we could go back in time? In fact, what if we could literally see the past with our own eyes? This really suggestive hypothesis is, in some ways, true. No, not in the sense that we can see the past of each of us separately. But we obviously have every means to see (at least) the past of our universeAnd to prove that an explosion was seen in space.

Yes, because this Big Bang is actually nothing more and nothing less thanremains“: a type of space fossil, an ancient supernova remnant located about 1.60.000 light-years from planet Earth and telling a story so old that it explains some of the phenomena that occurred at the dawn of our history.

The Large Magellanic Cloud and Our Galaxy

But let’s take a step back. What is a file The story of this explosion? And what prompted scientists to look closely in the direction of this mysterious phenomenon? Basically, researchers have been observing the Large Magellanic Cloud for some time, which has already left everyone speechless due to the presence of “luminous giant” and for A large tidal wave capable of ‘bending light’.

For starters, the Large Magellanic Cloud (despite its name) is a small galaxy, perhaps a Milky Way moon, can also be observed with the naked eye in the night sky in the southern hemisphere of the Earth. Although it is an irregular galaxy, it has many similarities with our own. Thus, what can be observed inside it is a kind of small summary of what happened to our space nest, which is why the attention of the scientific community is focused on it.

Space explosion spotted by NASA

The space explosion that he discovered Chandra XRay Orbital Telescope and analyzed by Hubble Space TelescopeTherefore, it should be framed as a small summary of our history. To be precise, combustion will help determine evolution and Disappearance of a distant star. In particular, its identification will lead to an understanding of the causes of the extinction of this star, which reached a critical mass and then exploded.

This is very important because it also affects the “life trajectory” of our stars. Indeed, it appears that an orb that has left traces of its end may be “dead” either by extracting matter, somehow, from a nearby star and thus becoming too large to continue to exist, or by merging with a white dwarf. In both the first and second cases, the result was thermonuclear explosionClearly destructive.

Pictures taken by Hubble and the window in the past

The image taken by Hubble is certainly amazing: the center of the image is dominated by Colored star remnants, surrounded by red bloody debris. The core of the explosion is vivid, purple, with a concentration of low, medium and high energies that fade to green, blue, and creamy white.

Starting with this snapshot, the researchers compared images taken by Hubble with the Large Magellanic Cloud in 2010, 2011 and 2020, in order to measure shock wave velocity of the explosion. According to the calculations, the light will be from the explosion It arrived on Earth about 670 years ago, Opening a window into the past that allows us to determine when the eruption occurred, what caused it, and to ensure that the scientific community now has a clearer idea of ​​the eruptions that occurred during the time of the Big Bang.