The bubble-like interior of the core-collapse supernova remnant Cassiopeia A

Abstract

Burbling explosions blow metallic bubbles Stars more than about eight times the mass of the Sun don't go out quietly. Asymmetric explosions are kicked off by the collapse of their iron cores when no more fusion energy can sustain them. Exactly how this stellar catastrophe proceeds is difficult to probe. Milisavljevic et al. have now peered into the supernova remnant Cas A in the near-infrared and present a three-dimensional map of its interior unshocked ejecta. The bubble-like structure points to turbulent mixing, which may help us understand other supernova remnants whose structure cannot be seen in such detail. Science , this issue p. 526