A real life Death Star?

Remember how in Star Wars the Death Star was built to destroy planets with its superlaser? Yeaaah... that’s why WR104 got its nickname. It’s what’s known as a Wolf Rayet star, it’s the final stage of a massive star’s life, with one last burst of fusion that makes them thousands of times brighter than the Sun as they shed their outer layers. It means that a supernova is the next step for a Wolf Rayet star. Which is what makes WR104 especially so dangerous. It’s a binary star, so it's orbiting another star, and that's what makes this really cool pinwheel shape out of the material it's throwing off. But because it’s in a spiral that means we can figure out more information about it than others. And our initial models of this star had its poles pointing directly at Earth. Its poles, where if the supernova is energetic enough, a big burst of gamma rays will fire out towards Earth, like the death star and its superlaser. Except it wouldn’t wipe out the Earth entirely, like the Death Star would, we’re not close enough to it thankfully to do that. But if it is as close as 2000 light years away and the alignment is just right, when WR104 goes supernova, the resulting gamma ray burst would destroy the Ozone layer on Earth exposing us to the damaging UV radiation from the Sun and leading to a possible mass extinction of life on Earth. The good news is that recent models of all the data we have of WR104 have suggested that the binary system is inclined to us more than originally thought, so that the poles of WR104 aren’t pointing towards us here on Earth. But they’re still pointing somewhere in the Universe, and I don’t know about you, but I do not want to be in the firing line when WR104 goes supernova. Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV Video edited by Martino Gasparrini: [email protected] Video produced by Marina Hui & Dr Becky Smethurst --- 📚 My book, "A Brief History of Black Holes", out NOW in hardback, paperback, e-book and audiobook (which I narrated myself!): http://lnk.to/DrBecky --- 👕 My merch, including JWST designs, are available here (with worldwide shipping!): https://dr-becky.teemill.com/ --- 🎧 Royal Astronomical Society Podcast that I co-host: podfollow.com/supermassive --- 🔔 Don't forget to subscribe and click the little bell icon to be notified when I post a new video! --- 👩🏽‍💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford. I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars. http://drbecky.uk.com