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Record-Busting Star Explosion Baffles Sky Watchers

A mind-boggling stellar explosion is baffling astronomers, who say this cosmic beast is so immensely powerful that no one's sure exactly what made it go boom.

The recently discovered inferno is about 200 times more powerful than a typical exploding star, or supernova, and 570 billion times brighter than our sun. It was first spotted in June by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae, nicknamed the "Assassin" project, so it's called ASASSN-15lh.

Astronomers describe their finding in a study published Thursday in the journalScience. 

Even though it's the brightest supernova on record — if indeed it is a supernova — it can't be seen with the naked eye from Earth, since it is 3.8 billion light-years away.

Even telescopes don't help much. "It looks like a little smudge," says Subo Dong, an astronomer at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University. "This is because it's so far away. It doesn't look so spectacular."

And if you could get into a spaceship and fly closer, you wouldn't want to, says astronomer Ben Shappee, at the Carnegie Observatories. That's because this monster puts out a lot of ultraviolet radiation, so if you actually got close enough to get a good look, "you would be dead right away," he points out.

Initially, the scientists didn't realize just how bright this beast was.

"We knew it was probably a supernova, but we didn't know at that time how interesting or how important it is," Dong recalls.

But soon, more observations from a different telescope made him realize "it was the most luminous supernova yet discovered." Dong says he was so excited when he got the news by email one night at 2 a.m., he couldn't go back to sleep at all.

Supernovas have captured the imaginations of sky watchers since ancient times. The first one was observed nearly 2,000 years ago. What's more, you wouldn't be here without them, because almost everything in your life is made up of the remnants of these violent stellar deaths.

"If you look around here on Earth, anything that's not hydrogen or helium was actually made inside of a star," explains Shappee. "It actually has to go through a supernova explosion to be distributed across the galaxy."

This new one is more than twice as bright as the previous record holder. What's powering it?

"Honestly, the answer is, 'We don't know,' " says Dong.

Astronomers will continue to watch it in the coming months with all kinds of telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope. Shappee says he is not sad that this explosion has already peaked and will slowly fade.

"We get more and more information — you see basically deeper and deeper into the supernova the longer you observe it," he says. "How it changes with time can give us additional information."

Edo Berger, an astronomer at Harvard University, says this find is exciting because "it's often, I think, the most extreme events that teach us the most about the range of possibilities that the universe comes up with, especially when it comes to exploding objects."

Most supernovas are the result of some sort of exploding star, says Berger.Superluminous supernovas are at least 10 times brighter than more garden-variety ones, and they're rare. Scientists know only of about 30 of these more powerful explosions, and while they have theories about what drives them, ASASSN-15lh is so extreme that current models can't explain it.

"The event itself seems to be coming from the center of the galaxy," says Berger. "And so I think that raises the possibility that it could be related to the supermassive black hole that resides in the center of a galaxy like that. And perhaps it is due to a very different mechanism than the explosion of a star." Perhaps a star got too close to the black hole, which is now ripping it to shreds.

"It's a story that continues to evolve. It will be interesting to see where we are a year from now," says Berger. "We might have a completely different version or story of what we think this object is."

Still, while this explosion is awesome, Berger says it's not the biggest bang astronomers have seen. Gamma ray bursts, for example, are much more energetic and luminous.

"In the world of supernova explosions, if this is what this object really is, then it is currently the record holder," says Berger. "But relative to a gamma ray burst, in fact, this explosion is actually kind of puny." npr

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Tattoos: Telling Stories in the Flesh. Q&A with Lars Krutak

Q: What is the earliest evidence of tattoos?

Krutak: The most ancient evidence of human tattooing is found on the mummified corpse of the 5,300-year-old Neolithic Iceman who was discovered in the Alps in 1991. The Iceman has a total of 61 tattoos—short lines etched in groups on his lower back and ankles, four lines on the torso above the gall bladder, a cross behind his right knee and two rings around his left wrist.

Interestingly, approximately 80 percent of the Iceman’s tattoos overlap with classical acupuncture points used to treat rheumatism, a medical condition that plagued him. Other tattoos were found to be located on or near acupuncture meridians.

Q: Were these early tattoos purely decorative? Did they serve another purpose?

Krutak: A common myth that continues to be perpetuated in popular and academic peer-reviewed publications is that tribal tattoos were ornamental. Some indigenous peoples did receive tattoos to enhance their physical appearance, but this practice was the exception rather than the rule. Most tattoos identified tribal designation, related the social accomplishments of the individuals who wore them or functioned as medicinal therapy or as apotropaic [evil-repelling] symbols. In short, I see body marking as a kind of biographical language.

Q: What are some traditional methods of tattooing practiced around the world?

Krutak: Skin-stitching or needle-and-thread tattooing was a technique used across the Arctic and Native North America. Hand-poking, where the design is poked into the skin with a sharp pigment-tipped needle, was a more common method of tattoo application. Today, hand-poked tattoos continue to be given across Indochina and Japan.

Hand-tapping is perhaps the most ubiquitous traditional technique and indigenous to Oceania, Southeast Asia, and parts of Melanesia (e.g., Papua New Guinea). In some regions of Africa, North America, and Asia, the method of scar tattooing was employed. Here, skin incisions were made with a lancet (obsidian, iron, etc.) and the tattooing pigment was immediately rubbed into the open wounds.

I would also characterize hand-pricking as yet another tattooing technique. Simple needles, usually two in number obtained from cactus or palm-tree spines, were wound together with cotton thread to prick the skin. The small space between the needle tips acted as a reservoir that held the liquid tattoo pigment in place. However, the needles had to be dabbed into the pigment after a few pricks had been made to keep this reservoir full. This technique was employed in the Middle East, Balkans, Amazon and other regions of South America, Northwest Mexico and the American Southwest.

There is a very rare technique that I call “hand-hammering” that might be ancestral to hand-tapping. It is found only in a small region of Northeast India among the Konyak and Wancho Naga. Female technicians fashioned an adze-like tool with a row of bush thorns and basically hammered the needles into the skin.

However, today, the majority of tattoos are created by an electric tattoo machine.

Q: In your latest book Tattoo Traditions of Native North America, you explore the tattoo culture of indigenous tribes of North America. What surprised you in your research?

Krutak: That nearly every culture indigenous to North America practiced some form of tattooing, and in many cases it had a perceived therapeutic value.

smithsonianscience.si.edu

Hillary I'm With You poster

 New posters featuring Hillary Clinton seem to be trying to make her "high flying, adored" with voters. The new images appeared at a campaign stop in San Antonio, Texas, where Clinton wooed Latino voters on Thursday. But according to NPR's Tamara Keith, the campaign says they don't know where the likeness came from. Banners were plastered all over the venue along with smaller signs and T-shirts.

One woman at the campaign event had a much different idea to honor Clinton:

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