Tycho Brahe - Lawrence M Krauss - Neil deGrasse Tyson - Horizon TV - Morgan Freeman TV - Universe TV - The Universe TV - Seven Ages of Starlight TV - Phil Plait TV - Star Trek: Voyager TV - Alex Filippenko - Michio Kaku - Michele Thaller - Stan Woosley - Stephen Hawking TV - Don Lamb - Jim Al-Khalili TV - How the Universe Works TV - Oasis -
When I had satisfied myself that no star of that kind had ever shone before, I was led into such perplexity by the unbelievability of the thing that I began to doubt the faith of my own eyes. Tycho Brahe
Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements – the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life – weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today. Lawrence M Krauss
Type 1A supernovae are of vital importance to populating [the universe] with the kind of elements that are important to us. Lawrence M Krauss
The knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on earth – the atoms that make up the human body – are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core under extreme temperatures and pressures. These stars – the high mass ones among them – went unstable in their later years – they collapsed and then exploded – scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy – guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself. These ingredients become part of gas clouds that condense, collapse, form the next generation of solar systems – stars with orbiting planets. And those planets now have the ingredients for life itself. So that when I look up at the night sky, and I know that yes we are part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up – many people feel small, ’cause they’re small and the universe is big. But I feel big because my atoms came from those stars. Neil deGrasse Tyson
Supernovae would be the key to measuring the expansion of the universe and reveal how it would all end. Horizon: From Here to Infinity, BBC 1999
Woosley worked out that if a star was to grow to an enormous size – what he called a massive star – then the whole cycle of life and death would be accelerated. A massive star would burn up all its fuel so quickly that it lived a fraction of a star’s normal life. It means these massive stars would die while still very young ... It was given the name hypernova. Horizon: The Death Star, BBC 2001
A supernova only burns brightly for three weeks. Horizon: How Big is the Universe? BBC 2012
In just over five years Saul [Perlmutter] and his team spot thirty-eight different stars in thirty different galaxies called supernova. Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman s1e9: Beyond the Darkness, Science 2010
When a star a hundred times heavier than our Sun switches off it goes with a bang. While we see the outward explosion as a supernova, this masks the inward implosion. The core is collapsing into the most dangerous object in the universe; the density becomes so great in the centre that Gravity sucks in Time and Space itself. Universe: Stars
Astronomers believe that the Crab Nebula was the debris from an exploding star: a supernova ... The Chinese Star was so bright it could be seen in daylight, and for a time it was even possible to write by its light. What’s more, the star had appeared in exactly the same part of the sky as the Crab Nebula. ibid.
Scientists are convinced that supernovas are much more significant than spectacular mere light shows. It is thought they are in fact the source of all the heavy elements that make up everything around us. The Universe s1e10, Life and Death of a Star, History 2007
A normal supernova arises from the explosion of a star ten times more massive than our sun. Incredibly, Supernova 2006 GY as astronomers have dubbed it seems to have signalled the death of a star 150 or even 200 times more massive – and that’s about as massive as a star can get. ibid.
Type 1A supernovas are always consistently bright no matter where they appear in space. Using these Type 1A supernovas, two different teams set out in the 1950s to measure the deceleration rate of the universe ... Having studied the results of sixty Type A1 supernovae, the teams were shocked by what they found. The universe wasn’t slowing down; its expansion was speeding up. The Universe s2e6: Dark Matter/Dark Energy
They are cosmic killers. Spectacular detonations. That for an instant out-shine a whole galaxy. Out of this exceptional cosmic catastrophe comes creation ... Supernovas: the sensational death of stars produce the biggest blasts in the universe. The Universe s2e9: Supernovas
A mighty supernova goes off somewhere in the universe every second. ibid.
Type 1A supernovas release no hydrogen; explosions are uniform in size and luminosity; type 2 supernovas release large amounts of hydrogen – the explosions vary greatly in size and luminosity. ibid.
Gamma Rays are the most powerful form of light known in the universe. ibid.
Supernovas and the gamma ray bursts associated with them are the brightest beacons in the universe. ibid.
A supernova: an immense burst of radiation that briefly outshines a galaxy. The Universe s4e1: Death Stars
There are old red giants so puffed up they are coming apart at the seams. Supernovae – the most spectacular firework displays in the universe. Mysterious black holes. Seven Ages of Starlight, BBC 2012
Supernovae, gamma ray bursts, solar flares – stars are the ticking time bombs of the universe. Phil Plait’s Bad Universe: Death Stars, Discovery 2010
A supernova is one of the most spectacular events in the universe. ibid.
When a star has thirty, fifty, a hundred times the mass of the sun ... It’s not just a supernova, it’s a hypernova. ibid.
A gamma ray burst from a hypernova explodes with such power that the beams are dangerous for a much greater distance. ibid.
Congratulations, everyone. Only two other crews in the history of Star Fleet have witnessed a supernova explosion. Star Trek: Voyager s3e11: The Q and the Grey, Janeway
Never in my wildest dreams did I think we would ever find planets orbiting a neutron star, a supernova. Alex Filippenko, University of Berkeley
A supernova is the greatest cataclysm in the history of the entire universe. Michio Kaku
A supernova can outshine an entire galaxy releasing trillions of times the energy of our sun. Michio Kaku
A nearby supernova would really ruin our day. Michio Kaku
A supernova is the most violent death of a star you can imagine. Michelle Thaller
A Type 1A supernova is a twenty billion billion billion megaton thermonuclear carbon bomb. Stan Woosley
We think that supernovae produce a stupendous sum of neutrinos when the core collapses to a neutron star. Stan Woosley
It is the single most violent event in the present universe. In a few short seconds a supernova produces more energy than the sun will in its lifetime. When astronomers analysed the light of supernovae they saw the signatures of the elements heavier than iron. Supernovae scatter their seeds across the universe. Stephen Hawking’s Universe: In the Beginning, BBC 1997
Releasing more energy than the Sun does in its entire lifetime by more than a billion. Don Lamb, University of Chicago
Fred Hoyle’s great insight was to work out precisely how the heaviest elements are created through nuclear fusion. Hoyle worked out that this process can only take place at unimaginably high pressures and temperatures of millions of degrees centigrade. In our universe there’s only one place such conditions exist: in stars. Jim Al-Khalili, Atom: The Key to the Cosmos, BBC 2008
When the largest stars run out of hydrogen to fuse hydrogen into helium they come to the end of their lives. And they collapse under the weight of their own gravity. And then explode outwards. In a blinding flash of inspiration Hoyle and his colleague William Fowler realised that supernovae might be the hottest places in the universe. Hot enough to fuse together even the heaviest of atoms. Hoyle and Fowler had found the furnaces in which everything was made. ibid.