SN1987A

"Cosmic Progeny"/huntemann                                                                                                                                             Page 1

Prologue
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Sanduleak -69 202

Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus NGC 2070)
LMC 5:35:28.6 R.A; -69:16:13 decl.
179,000 years ago
         Ol’Sanduleak was old for his size, of not much more than 20 million years. That would normally be young for a star, but Ol’Sanduleak was one of those real hot blue type B3 stars. Born on the fast track in a crowded nursery in the lower arm of the Tarantula Nebula, part of the Large Magellanic Cloud.

         The nursery was so crowded, in his younger millennia, he was almost eaten several times by a couple of red giants. Saved at last, by a passing black hole that flung him out of that nursery.

         Of course Ol’Sanduleak was a hungry sol himself. He dined on suns of much greater age: Yellow type Os; brown dwarfs; and entire planetary systems. The one delicacy he almost never got, though, was nebular gas. His brilliance was so intense that by his own shear light pressure, the gas was blown away. It parted in front of him wherever he went.

         He was beginning to feel old and spent a while ago, when he happened across a solitary type M star. She was sweet, and not so petite by any means, maybe tipping the scales at 5 or 6 solar mass. But compared to his 15 solar mass, she was a banquet.

         He thoroughly enjoyed the dance they did. Around and around, for thousands of years, slowly nudging closer together. A kiss of coronas, an exchange of photospheres, until, almost by accident, their magnetic fields aligned just so, and she fell into his bulk in one big reverse burp.

         Wow, what a scene. He was so excited he ejected a pair of rings, one up and one down. He bathed the local group with renewed brilliance.

         But alas, she had had a heavy core with many more metals than he had expected. ‘You know, yah just can’t tell from a distance. Once you get up close, that darn gravity thing keeps you together and you just can’t get away.’

         After the initial rush of acquisition, lethargy settled in and he quickly approached exhaustion. It was all he could do to maintain his perpetual blue hue. The strain to stay blue was more than he could handle sometimes and he’d slip down to red, then slough it off and glow blue again.

         For 20,000 years, he tried to keep burning, but he was running low on Hydrogen. Hell, he was out of Helium too. Well, not ‘out’ of Helium, just not able to put it in the right place. It was stuck, mixed in his upper stratums, unable to swallow it down to his core where he needed it... stellar indigestion. And, it was converting to Carbon and Oxygen faster than he could make it out of what little Hydrogen he had. That last little star didn’t give him enough spare Hydrogen to keep him going at 20 solar mass.

         And he was getting heavy too. With all this indigestion and sans Hydrogen burning, he was producing Neon, Magnesium, Silicon, and Sulfur. He even started producing the dreaded ‘end of the line’ Iron. He was carrying a load of Iron in his pants.

         His temperature profile wasn’t up to snuff either. His inner layers were cooling, still millions of degrees mind you, but too cold to burn Carbon. And that was what he needed to support his outer layers.

         He finally gave up, and in one last gasp, gave in to gravity. In the blink of an eye, he seemed to vanish from the cosmos. He was still there, but the inrush from the gravitational collapse created an inward shock wave that absorbed and hid everything inside him, even light.

         His inner pressure and temperature rose to billions of degrees, true particle smashing levels. Half his mass was liberated as neutrinos, which ‘could’ escape the shock. The other half was bottled up in his innards for hours.

         In that billion degree core, Iron ignited and burned to elements all the way past Uranium. Only when the shock reached the Iron core, did it release all that energy. It exploded out of his core with the force of an entire galaxy of suns. Life and its progenitors were wiped out for hundreds of light-years all around.

         Now, all that happened 179,000 years ago. But, since the Earth was 179,000 light-years away from Sanduleak on February 23, 1987, we didn’t see it until SN1987A (the supernova of Sanduleak -69 202) announced itself with a rush of neutrinos, on that date.

         This is the story of what happened here, that was caused by events in that galaxy so far far away1 and so long ago2.
         
Pages: 4
Words: 779

Footnotes
1  179,000 light-years is not very far away by astronomical standards.

2  And, 179,000 years is not really so long ago either.