When Sun-type stars use up all their fuel, they shrink to form white dwarfs. Sometimes these dead stars come back to life in a thermonuclear explosion and produce a fireball of intense X-ray radiation.
A research team led by the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) was able to observe, for the first time, this type of X-ray light explosion. Glòria Sala, a researcher in the UPC’s Astronomy and Astrophysics Group and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), participates in this study, which made the cover of Nature.