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Unveiling the turbulent times of a dying star

Astrophysicists have used the National Science Foundation’s Blue Waters supercomputer to perform 3-D simulations of a mere 10 milliseconds in the collapse of a massive star into a neutron star, proving that these catastrophic events — often called hypernovae — can generate the enormous magnetic fields needed to explode the star and fire off bursts of gamma rays visible halfway across the universe.

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Oldest stars ever seen found near Milky Way centre

Astronomers have discovered the oldest stars ever seen, dating from before the Milky Way Galaxy formed, when the universe was just 300 million years old. The stars, found near the centre of the Milky Way, are surprisingly pure but contain material from an even earlier star, which died in an enormous explosion called a hypernova.