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POPSStellar Time Bomb - Tick, Tick If it’s a binary, then both stars are likely to end their lives as supernovae -- explosions that blast the stars to bits. Each will leave behind a neutron star or a black hole. A single star would probably explode, too, but it could form one of the most powerful blasts in the universe -- a gamma-ray burst.
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POPSInto the Orion Nebula The fledgling stars were seen to flare in their X-ray intensity much more than our Sun does today. This suggests our Sun had many violent and energetic outbursts when it was much younger. The wispy filaments (pink and purple) are clouds of gas and dust as seen by Hubble in optical light. This gas and dust will one day condense into disks of material from which future generations of stars will be born.