This Perfectly Spherical Supernova Is Weirding Us Out

The universe is a chaotic place filled with exploding stars, material falling into black holes, and rogue planets wandering off on their own. All that chaos makes astronomers suspicious when they glimpse a hint of perfection in the cosmos, like a bubble of material left over from the death of a star that appears to be in perfectly symmetrical shape. Astronomers recently discovered the remnant of a galactic supernova with a remarkable circular symmetry, making it stand out as one of the most perfectly spherical objects detected in the universe. Perfection is not always a bad problem to have, but it does prompt certain questions regarding how the object came to be this way. The discovery, submitted to the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia and made available on the preprint website arXiv, was spotted in images collected by the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder. The researchers behind the paper identified the object as a galactic supernova remnant—an expand ... Read full article.