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  • NEWS FEATURE

How to blow up a star

Supernova simulations are resolving a 50-year-old mystery about stellar death throes.
  1. Elizabeth Gibney
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An artist’s impression of supernova 1987A

An artist’s impression of supernova 1987A, showing its asymmetric ejection of material. Credit: L. Calçada/ESO

After spending three months trying to blow up a star, Hans-Thomas Janka and his team finally saw what they had been waiting for. Like the world’s most patient pyromaniacs, they watched their massive stellar simulation — rendered in painstaking detail — inch closer to detonation. Each day, their supercomputer ticked through just 5 milliseconds of the star’s life.

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Nature 556, 287-289 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-04601-7

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