Going Out with a Bang – Space & Physics | Weizmann Wonder Wander

In the not-so-distant past, the discovery of a supernova – an exploding star – was considered a rare occasion. When Prof. Avishay Gal-Yam of the Weizmann Institute’s Particle Physics and Astrophysics Department was a doctoral student, for example, he located seven of them over the course of four years. Today, advanced measuring instruments and analysis methods make it possible to detect fifty such explosions on a daily basis. On the one hand, the improved means used by present-day astrophysicists to spot supernovae may have made these celestial events less of an attraction over the…