Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and beginning April 20th, 2021 (Eastern Time) the Yahoo Answers website will be in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.

Trending News

Promoted
Arthur R
Lv 5
Arthur R asked in Science & MathematicsAstronomy & Space · 1 decade ago

Location of nearby nova?

I recall reading sometime in the last century, that there was a recent (within 100 years) nearby (within 50 light years) nova. It was predicted that the plasma shock wave (traveling at 1/3 the speed of light -- don't ask, I took a graduate-level relativity course at the California Institute of Technology) was supposed to hit the solar system in 2003 or 2005. If the calculations are correct, it obviously didn't do very much, but does someone else recall seeing this or have any idea where the nova might be? (If the date recalculates to 2012, we would have yet another "coincidence" about the end of the world!)

Update:

I may be conflating two different recollections: One from JPL when I was working there in the late 1970s or early 1980s, which may have been a "purple pigeon" (i.e., highly speculative) paper, and one from a fact article in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, which stated that the nova was observed in the sourthern hemisphere, and may have stated that the confirming information was lost during World War II.

2 Answers

Relevance
  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    I have yet to hear of any star within 100 light years of Earth undergoing a full-scale classical nova outburst, let alone a recurrent or dwarf nova outburst. All the stars I know about that have undergone a nova outburst are hundreds or thousands of light years away. Some of them couldn't be found on photographs at all before they exploded. There are however some binary star systems that have undergone nova outbursts that have a white dwarf that is almost at the maximum mass it can have before it collapses, runaway nuclear fusion starts, then the white dwarf blows completely apart as a type 1A supernova. One such system, IK Pegasi is only 150 light years away. Another system is RS Ophuichi, which is much farther away.

  • suitti
    Lv 7
    1 decade ago

    RS Ophiuchi is a recurring nova 5000 light years aaway, with last outburst in 2006.

    Source(s): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS_Oph
Still have questions? Get your answers by asking now.