A real life Death Star?

By Dr. Becky

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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 St