+
Heroes

In 1437, Korean scientists watched a star go nova. Modern scientists finally found it.

As any historian of medieval East Asia or player of Civilization V: Brave New World will tell you, 15th century Koreans were really, really, really good at science.

[rebelmouse-image 19475372 dam="1" original_size="700x467" caption="A statue of King Sejong the Great in Seoul. Thanks, guy! Photo by Republic of Korea/Flickr." expand=1]A statue of King Sejong the Great in Seoul. Thanks, guy! Photo by Republic of Korea/Flickr.

Under the judicious rule of Sejong the Great, the kingdom's top researchers spent a lot of time looking at space and making maps of it.


In 1437, during one of these looking sessions, a bunch of scientists thought they discovered a bright new star, one that easily outshone everything else in the sky (eat it, Luyten 726-8A).

14 days later, it disappeared.

Unbeknownst to the ancient sky-watchers, the "new star" was not new at all. It was, instead, what's known as a "classical nova" — an ultra-dense, white dwarf star that sucks so much matter off a neighboring star it causes a giant, nuclear explosion. The star gets super bright for a short period of time before once again fading into the cosmic background — like a stellar version of Pokémon GO.

The problem is, 15th century Korean scientists didn't exactly keep the best records. For starters, it was the 15th century, and pretty much everyone had rickets. Also, the modern Korean alphabet wouldn't be invented for another seven years.

You'll be shocked to learn the location of the star that went nova was lost to time.

Until now.

After 580 years of searching, a team of researchers from four continents has finally located the star, making it the oldest such nova to have its location accurately documented.

Lead researcher Michael Shara had spent nearly 30 years looking for remnants of the stellar explosion, known as Nova Scorpii. (A great name for any Dutch speed metal band that might be looking, btw. Don't sleep on it!)  

Shara told The Atlantic's Marina Kornen that attempting to locate the site had been like "searching for a needle in a billion haystacks." Initially, the American Museum of Natural History curator and his team believed they'd find the nova between two stars in the constellation Scorpio. With the aid of online astronomical catalogs, which weren't a thing the first time Shara looked back in the 1980s, the astronomers combed through records of hundreds of millions of stars until, eventually, they focused in on a planetary nebula near the original search area.

In a classic "That's no moon, it's a space station" moment, the team rapidly realized that the nebula was the nova — or at least the remnants of it. They had been looking between the wrong two stars the entire time.

The team published its findings in the August edition of Nature.

"When we relaxed our criteria as to where to look in the constellation, we found the nova in 90 minutes," Shara told Space.com.

Image by K. Ilkiewicz and J. Mikolajewska.

This 2016 image, taken by a telescope in Chile, shows the star — indicated by two long, red hashmarks — surrounded by the cloud of hydrogen it ejected in 1437. The smaller red "plus sign" in the center shows the star's location at the time it went nova almost six centuries ago.

Thanks to research by Shara and others, we know a lot more about novas than we did in 1437 — and even more now that Nova Scorpii has been tracked down.

In addition to classical novas, astronomers have observed frequent "dwarf novas" — much smaller explosions — across the visible universe. Shara has long suspected that both types of novae arise from the same star systems at different points in time rather than from different systems altogether.

Images from the 1930s and '40s, published in the paper, show the star pair that produced the 1437 nova undergoing a series of dwarf novae — lending Shara's theory some weighty backup.

Whether you specifically care about the dynamics of matter exchange in binary star systems of not, it's hard to deny that — holy crap — this is amazing.

[rebelmouse-image 19475374 dam="1" original_size="700x364" caption="Image by tyrogthegatekeeper/Wikimedia Commons." expand=1]Image by tyrogthegatekeeper/Wikimedia Commons.

When those 15th century Korean astronomers looked at the sky, they knew they were witnessing something important about their universe.

With the right tools, some tenacity, and a bit of luck, human beings have made it possible to find out what that is. Even after a 600-year search.

Science, then, as now, totally rules.

All photos courtesy of The Coca-Cola Company

Behind the Scenes Making Recycled Records with Mark Ronson

True

You’re walking down the sidewalk, earbuds in, listening to your favorite hip-hop beats. As your head bobs to the sounds, the sun warms your back. It’s a perfect day.

When the chorus hits, the empty Sprite bottle in your hand becomes a drumstick, passing traffic becomes a sea of concertgoers, and the concrete beneath your feet is suddenly a stage. Spinning on your heels, you close out the song with your face to the sky and hands in the air.

Keep ReadingShow less
@penslucero/TikTok

Pency Lucero taking in the Northern Lights

Seeing the northern lights is a common bucket list adventure for many people. After all, it ticks a lot of boxes—being a dazzling light show, rich historical experience and scientific phenomenon all rolled into one. Plus there’s the uncertainty of it all, never quite knowing if you’ll witness a vivid streak of otherworldly colors dance across the sky…or simply see an oddly colored cloud. It’s nature’s slot machine, if you will.

Traveler and content creator Pency Lucero was willing to take that gamble. After thorough research, she stumbled upon an Airbnb in Rörbäck, Sweden with an actual picture of the northern lights shining above the cabin in the listing. With that kind of photo evidence, she felt good about her odds.

However, as soon as she landed, snow began falling so hard that the entire sky was “barely visible,” she told Upworthy. Martin, the Airbnb host, was nonetheless determined to do everything he could to ensure his guests got to see the spectacle, even offering to wake Lucero up in the middle of the night if he saw anything.

Then one night, the knock came.

Keep ReadingShow less
@elll.rose/TikTok

Secondhand can be "just as stylish."

Ellie Rose had been walking by the window display of a nearby charity shop (a non-profit thrift store ala Goodwill or Salvation Army) in England when she was struck by an idea: Maybe they could use a “bit of help styling” in order to attract customers.

As a sustainablefashion influencer, the 22-year-old felt like she could infuse her knowledge of today’s trends into the mannequin outfits, hopefully showing people that "buying secondhand can be just as stylish as buying new."

Rose reached out to several different stores offering to help for free, and many accepted. A viral clip posted to her TikTok shows how she worked her fashion magic to give the mannequins a complete makeover. Spoiler alert—it’s a complete 180.

Keep ReadingShow less
Pop Culture

People are loving Drew Barrymore's live reaction to her first perimenopause hot flash

“I don’t know that I have ever heard a celebrity talk about a hot flash in the moment. Thank you for being so real."

The Drew Barrymore Show/Youtube

Drew Barrymore getting a quick assist from Jennifer Aniston

It feels safe to say that many, if not most people hail Drew Barrymore as the “Queen of Candid.” She can seemingly talk to absolutely anyone about anything in a way that’s consistently warm and authentic.

That even goes for when she experiences her first hot flash in front of a live television audience, apparently.

While speaking with guests Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler on her talk show, Barrymore abruptly appears flustered, fanning herself and removing her jacket.

Without missing a beat, she says, “I am so hot, I think I'm having my first perimenopause hot flashes.”
Keep ReadingShow less

Baby Cora bears a striking resemblance to actor Woody Harrelson.

We can all get a little fascinated by doppelgängers and it's fun to find people who look alike. But what do you do when your baby girl looks uncannily like a famous middle-aged man?

Mom Dani Grier Mulvenna shared a photo of her infant daughter Cora side by side with a photo of Woody Harrelson on Twitter, with the caption "Ok but how does our daughter look like Woody Harrelson." The resemblance truly is remarkable, and the tweet quickly racked up hundreds of thousands of likes, shares and replies.

Keep ReadingShow less
Education

Unearthed BBC interview features two Victorian-era women discussing being teens in the 1800s

Frances 'Effy' Jones, one of the first women to be trained to use a typewriter and to take up cycling as a hobby, recalls life as a young working woman in London.

Two Victorian women discuss being teens in the 1800s.

There remains some mystery around what life was like in the 1800s, especially for teens. Most people alive today were not around in the Victorian era when the technologies now deemed old-fashioned were a novelty. In this rediscovered 1970s clip from the BBC, two elderly women reminisce about what it was like being teenagers during a time when the horse and buggy was still the fastest way to get around.

Keep ReadingShow less
via Pexels

Parents who just can't stop fighting

Whitney Goodman, a licensed marriage and family therapist, shared a video about kids who grew up in homes where their parents were always fighting, which made many people feel seen. It also started a conversation about who deserves more empathy in the parent-child relationship: the parents or the children.

Goodman is known as the “radically honest” psychotherapist and the author of “Toxic Positivity: Keeping it Real in a World Obsessed with Being Happy.”

"If you grew up in this kind of house, you may have noticed that your family would split off into different alliances or teams to try to manage the material discord. Because the marriage wasn't a good or safe foundation for the family, everybody else had to kind of go and form these new teams,” Goodman explained in an Instagram post.

Keep ReadingShow less