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LSU Astronomy researchers predict there will be a massive cosmic explosion that will provide stargazers something special, but it will not happen until 2083. Professor Juhan Frank says a white dwarf and a star three times the size of the sun are spiraling towards each other 7,700 lightyears away and its set to end in a bang.
“Initially there is a gradual process that then speeds up rapidly, and ends up dumping an enormous amount of mass onto the white dwarf, and that is what ends up producing the explosion,” said Frank.
That explosion will leave the currently faint star, V Sagittae, as one of the brightest stars in the night sky.
And because it’s 7,700 light-years away, it’s history.
“This explosion, or this merger burst, according to our calculations, has already occurred, in fact, it occurred somewhere around the end of the Stone Age,” said Frank who adds it’s a good thing it’s that far away. A similar explosion nearby would be catastrophic.
The Professor says the explosion, and the decades-long dance the two stars will do beforehand, are a fantastic educational opportunity.
“We are learning about stellar evolution, learning about the origin of supernovae and types of other explosive events in the universe, and it is very likely that we will discover even new phenomenon,” said Frank.
The findings were first shared at the 235th annual American Astronomical Society meeting in Hawaii.
