Starship Asterisk*

[img3="The final seconds in the life of a very massive star are captured in 3-D. This is the first time a 3-D model of such a star has been developed and could lead to a better understanding of why these stars blow up as supernovae. (Credit: S.M. Couch)"]http://images.spaceref.com/news/2015/oo ... star-3.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]

Giant stars die a violent death. After a life of several million years, they collapse into themselves and then explode in what is known as a supernova.

How these stars explode remains a mystery. However, recent work led by Michigan State University may bring some answers to this astronomical question.

In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, the team details how it developed a three-dimensional model of a giant star’s last moments.

“This is something that has never been done before,” said Sean Couch, an MSU assistant professor of physics and astronomy and lead author of the paper. “This is a significant step toward understanding how these stars blow up.”

The ongoing problem is that, until now, researchers have only been able to do this in one-dimension. Nature, of course, is three-dimensional. ...

What allowed the researchers to break the 3-D barrier is new developments in technology. “There are new resources, both hardware and software, that allow this to now be feasible,” Couch said. ...

• Astrophysical Journal Letters 808(1) L21 (20 July 2015) DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/808/1/L21
  arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1503.02199 > 07 Mar 2015 (v1), 22 Jun 2015 (v2)