Supernova article at Science in the News

I’m sure we’ll be covering supernovae frequently in our daily astro-ph digesting, but if you can’t wait to learn more about these amazing stellar explosions, I invite you to read my short piece at the Science in the News Flash.

The piece (very!) briefly covers the characteristics of supernovae, their role in the chemical enrichment of the universe and the formation of galaxies, their applications to cosmology, and new transient searches that are detecting new supernovae at an incredible rate. Only a small percentage of stars will end their lives in a supernova and it’s an outrageously brief stage in their lives — I think it’s fascinating how far-reaching the consequences are.

Science in the News is a terrific student organization in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard. They hold a live public lecture every week during the academic year where graduate students get the opportunity to tell a few hundred Boston-area residents about their research. They also run the Flash, an online science news publication; hold science cafes; visit schools; and more.

Is there a science outreach organization you participate in at your university or in your community? Leave a comment and tell us all about it!

• About the Author

About Nathan Sanders

I am one of the members of the team that founded Astrobites in 2010 and a co-founder of ComSciCon, the Communicating Science Workshop for graduate students. I earned my Ph.D. in astronomy at Harvard University in 2014, focusing on observations of supernovae and their host galaxies; investigating how massive stars explode and enrich the interstellar medium. I did my undergraduate work at Michigan State University.