The Phoenix Effect

The Birth, Death, and Rebirth of Stars

A report by:

RAdm. R.M. Wey & Comm. D.L. Wey

COSR:SFS-SFC DCOSR:SFS-SFC

Like the ancient gods of destruction from classical literature, the universe seems often to destroy itself…Only to create itself again. Research conducted in a region of space that is home to a galaxy known as M82[the Starburst galaxy]has brought to light some peculiar findings.

For a considerable period of time, this galaxy has been described as an exploding one…Based on the images that astronomers have collected. These images portray a jagged, perhaps agitated appearance.

However, new findings of the area suggest not merely death, but life as well, a rebirth, if you will. Research recently being conducted has detected an unsettling interaction between M82 and its neighbor, M81.

This interaction seems to have affected the very structure of M82; By this we mean that, as old stars are dying, the resulting gases and dust are rapidly being reformed into new stars.

Though an effect understood in principle, this ‘Starburst’ phenomenon has never really been seen in detail. Using an array of ground based radio telescopes, m82 has shown us the galactic upheaval that creates stars' en masse.

Such a procedure can only cover an area of 3.E+003 * 2.E+003[three thousand by two thousand]light years wide, and M82 is 40.E+003[or 40000 LY]. However, what was found there was quite enlightening. In the area under observation, some fifty supernovas have occurred over the last one thousand years. That is more than ten times the rate of our own galaxy.

This makes this particular galaxy to be of great interest to the space sciences as a whole. In a sense, this galaxy is both a nursery and graveyard for stellar evolution. For as the remnants of the once great stellar bodies boil away, their diffused radio glow is a record of what older explosions were like which occurred many millions of years ago.

Though such phenomena are rare in our little corner of the universe, such they were not in the early beginning; It has been postulated that such occurrences were critical in the evolution of our own galaxy, as well as our surrounding neighbors.