Last week, South Korean girl group aespa dropped a brilliant new single, “Supernova,” which compared their hiss to an exploding star. As the track’s music video racked up millions of views, NASA’s Webb telescope got in on the act, sharing on X the youngest known real-life supernova remnant – the 340-year-old Cassiopeia A image.
NASA likes to use popular music to teach the wonders of our universe to people who are always online (as the X account also mentioned recently “Supermassive Black Hole” Created by Muse and Sabrina Carpenter “Strong coffee”). Still, the group’s interest in aespa has us wondering: How scientifically accurate are the lyrics to “Supernova”? We asked Mashable’s science editor Mark Kaufman to rate the popular song, using English translation Original lyrics of this song in Korean.
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He starts by giving the girls props. “It’s awesome that a pop superstar is showing insane respect for a supernova,” he wrote. “After all, supernovae—the explosions caused by the collapse of supermassive stars—are among the largest explosions known in the universe.” That means the song’s opening line, “I’m like some kind of supernova, watch out,” and the lyrics, “Bring The Light of the Dying Star” is very accurate.
How about lyrics that ask “Where do we come from?” Or, “Every cell in me was created from a star” and “Now it’s inside me, supernova.”
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Kaufman says these are also completely accurate. “[Supernovae] Explosions make life possible. As aespa rightly points out, we are all products of these great cosmic events. The most massive stars cook important elements in their cores, such as iron in their blood. “This material is spread throughout the galaxy,” Kaufman said. “The explosion itself creates heavier elements.”
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NASA’s X post about Cassiopeia A supports Kauffman, explaining that “supernovae…are critical to life as we know it. They spread elements like calcium in our bones and iron in our blood.” Go into space and sow the seeds of a new generation of stars and planets.
So when aespa sings, “Events are coming, ticking bombs,” they are describing explosions that are common in our universe and crucial to it. Stars explode infinitely—— Department of Energy It is estimated that an explosion occurs “somewhere in the universe” every 10 seconds, but most of us will never be lucky enough to witness one of these explosions. “The giant stars we see in the night sky will one day go supernova,” Kaufman said, but it won’t happen in our lifetime. “Perhaps in about 100,000 years, the bright red star Betelgeuse will explode and become the brightest star in the sky in about 100 days – so bright that it can be seen during the day It! It’s going to be wild.
If elements of Supernova exist within each of us, then the lyrics “Meet you in infinity…look at this universe I brought” also hit home. We may be just a tiny speck of light in a vast infinity, but we make our little place in the universe meaningful every day by “bringing out” our own personal universe.
