The famous "pillars of creation" destroyed

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'Pillars of creation' destroyed by supernova

The famous "pillars of creation" – clouds of dust and gas imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope, are no more – a supernova blast wave has blown them apart. But their ghostly image will linger for another thousand years because of the time it takes for light to travel from them to Earth.
The pillars have been astronomical icons since Hubble imaged them in 1995 (scroll down for Hubble image). They are part of a larger star-forming region called the Eagle Nebula, which lies 7000 light years away. That means we are seeing the pillars as they were 7000 years ago, when the light first left them.
Now, an infrared image from the Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed a previously unseen supernova blast wave that was advancing towards the pillars at that time, threatening to ultimately sweep them away.

In tatters

Nicolas Flagey of the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale in Orsay, France, led a team that obtained the image. It shows a cloud of hot dust thought to have been heated by a supernova blast that likely occurred between 1000 and 2000 years earlier.
Based on the cloud's position, the blast wave looked set to hit the pillars in 1000 years. Taking into account the 7000-year time lag for their light to reach the Earth, that means the pillars were actually destroyed 6000 years ago, Flagey says.
We will not see their obliteration from Earth for another 1000 years, however. And when we do, they will be in tatters – Flagey says only a few patches of the pillars are dense enough to survive the blast. "All the other parts will crumble when the shock wave arrives," he says.
Now, his team is searching through historical records to see if ancient astronomers spotted the supernova responsible for the pillars' destruction. It should have become visible on Earth 1000 to 2000 years ago, but while a few candidate events have been found in the right time frame, so far none has been confirmed as the culprit.
The results were presented on Tuesday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington, US.


A new Spitzer image portends the end for the pillars of creation
(Image: NASA/JPL/Caltech/IAS/SSC/N Flagey/A Noriega-Crespo)

Source

I took the liberty of posting a hubble image of 'Pillars Of Creation' in M16 (Eagle Nebulae)


An image im sure alot of people can identify

EDIT;

on further inspection i noticed an image was already provided showing exacltly where the pillars are in m16:


The Hubble Space Telescope made icons
of the Eagle Nebula's pillar-like clouds of
dust and gas in 1995 (inset)
(Image: NASA/JPL/Caltech/IAS/SSC/N Flagey/A Noriega-Crespo)

InFront

Based on the cloud's position, the blast wave looked set to hit the pillars in 1000 years. Taking into account the 7000-year time lag for their light to reach the Earth, that means the pillars were actually destroyed 6000 years ago, Flagey says.

We will not see their obliteration from Earth for another 1000 years, however. And when we do, they will be in tatters – Flagey says only a few patches of the pillars are dense enough to survive the blast. "All the other parts will crumble when the shock wave arrives," he says.

Isn't it weird to think that in 1,000 years somebody will be posting on some new-fangled internet thingy or the like, after seeing this thing on the news and (hopefully) saying

"isn't it cool that those guys with their limited technology were be able to predict that we would be seeing this on earth today"?

I wonder if we will be the 'Greeks of our time'?

lazygit

i wonder if they will still be using the word "new-fangled" ... humm

mike65

The news that something happened 8-9000 years ago and we won't see the results for a millenium somehow does'nt seem terribly important and yet is slighty groovy!

Mike.

InFront

lazygit wrote:

i wonder if they will still be using the word "new-fangled" ... humm

Well maybe not:D . But you know they'll be 'the worst generation there ever was'.
It's nice to have some sort of (convoluted) link to share with people yet to be born, people a whole millenium away.

Then again by the time this image does reach us, wormholes may even have been found to accomodate time travel and Stephen Hawking will be reduced to working at arrivals and departures, and this image will be irrelevant...

FF7 7777

25th Anniversary - New Pics taken.

hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2015/01/