Nonfiction Reading Response (3- HW #4)

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/348098/description/Supernovas_death_throes_revealed

Part 1- Summary:

     This article is called "Supernova's Death Throes Revealed" and it's written by Andrew Grant. This article is about how scientists predicted the explosion of a supernova. A supernova is the explosion of a star when it's core runs out of fuel and collapses. The scientists predicted the supernova when they were using a program. That program scans the sky and tells you when something suddenly brightens. They realized that when the star blew up, the brightenings were  signs of the supernova. The brightening was the star shedding mass.

Part 2- Analysis: 

     I think that the author wanted to let us know that stars shedding off some material before exploding is very very helpful advice to scientists. Now, they have more evidence to when a star will explode. That can also tell us when the sun will explode, because the sun is a star. 

     If the sun explodes- when the sun explodes- we are all screwed. The sun grows plants, which we need to survive. The animals eat plants, and we need animals to survive. The sun evaporates water, which results in condensation and precipitation. We need water to survive. Without the sun, we won't have the necessities. The sun shedding some mass can tell us if the supernova is near.

Part 3- Conclusion:

     This is a useful piece of information to scientists because now they don't have to really worry about a star exploding spontaneously, unless it is a rare case. In the text, it says some other stars have lived on even when they shed material. Maybe they can find out what the difference was between those kinds of stars.