has a star exploded recently?

Answer 1

Yes there is stuff on the NASA website, Search for SN 2006 gy. The story broke on Monday. And it was a NASA Press Conference at which it broke!

WHAT THE PAPERS SAY:

I give three snippets of the press reaction to the news. To whet the appetite ...

(1) The BBC story opens with

"Supernovae occur when huge, mature stars effectively run out of fuel and collapse in on themselves.

But scientists believe this one was obliterated in an explosion which blasted all its material into space.

And astronomers say a star in our own Milky Way galaxy could be about to perform the same celestial fireworks."

(2) The Universe Today story (see link) says:

"Even though SN 2006gy is the intrinsically brightest supernova ever seen, it exploded in galaxy NGC 1260, which is located about 240 million light-years away - so you need a powerful telescope to see it. The closest star that’s in the same category is Eta Carinae, a massive star located only 7500 light-years away. No telescope will be necessary when it explodes."

(Eta Carinae has been giving hints of its becoming a supernova since 1843)

(3) the Space.com article opines:

"The new findings suggest some of the first stars in the early universe, which were also very massive, went out in spectacular explosions like SN 2006gy, instead of bypassing the supernova stage and collapsing directly into black holes.

"In terms of the effect on the early universe, there's a huge difference between these two possibilities," said study leader Nathan Smith, also of UC Berkeley. "One pollutes the galaxy with large quantities of newly made elements, and the other locks them up forever in a black hole."

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Your best guide here is your own interest in the topic and a good search engine!

Answer 2

Because the stars we see are so far away, it takes the light billions of years to travel to earth. So everything we see around us in space is an old photographj. If a star exploded yesterday, we would only be able to observe it billions of years from now.

So there's no real way to know if a star has recently exploded.

Answer 3

Yes. Somewhere in the universe a star exploded recently.

Answer 4

"Recent" is a relative term in astronomy. Light from a distant explosion can only get to us at the speed of light, no faster. If an object is one light-year away, it takes a year for us to receive any kind of message from it. If the sun suddenly went dark (which it wouldn't) it would take a full eight minutes for us to become aware of it. Light from distant objects is very faint, but when a mega supernova goes off we can see it even if it happened in another galaxy. Galaxies are very VERY far away, further than the stars. So if you look up and see a bright new star appear it could be the death of a star happening 240,000,000 years ago when dinosaurs ruled the earth, but the light from it is just now reaching us.

Answer 5

Yep, happens all the time. You can find out about the most recent ones here http://www.rochesterastronomy.org/snimages/ .

They go off almost every day, and those are only the ones we catch - there are more. The one that people are talking about, 2006gy, is not very recent - 6 months old already. NASA couldn't put out the press release until this week because the paper presenting and defending the result wasn't accepted until this week.

Answer 6

Not only is "recent" a relative term, if one exploded 2 minutes ago, we wouldn't know about it for many years.

Answer 7

this people are misleading you...if you go to yahoos front page right now, astronomers have just discovered the brightest supernova ever recorded!!!!!! stars explode all the time, just in different galaxies, thats all, soon one will "explode" in our galaxy too. i hope this helps!!!!!

Answer 8

Apparently it is a new large form of supernova. There doesn't seem to be anything about it on the Nasa website, must be too busy working out how to get men to mars :)

Answer 9

Bones is da man...! Here's the straight poop on the MOST recent observed supernova ==>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070508/ap_on_sc/supernova;_ylt=ArKOCEQ_3v0V0mZLtPTO0vxvieAA

Answer 10

there are too many stars to know