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Watch: Simulations of Stellar Geysers from Luminous Blue Variable Stars

Massive outbursts from stellar giants known as luminous blue variables have puzzled scientists. New 3-D simulations hint at a mechanism

For more information, read Elusive Origin of Stellar Geysers Revealed by 3-D Simulations.

The journal article is “Luminous Blue Variable Outbursts from the Variations of Helium Opacity,” by Yan-Fei Jiang, Matteo Cantiello, Lars Bildsten, Eliot Quataert, Omer Blaes and James Stone. Nature, September 27, 2018. Cantiello is a member of the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics.

Visualizations by Joseph A. Insley, Argonne National Laboratory.

Images of Eta Carinae system by European Space Observatory and NASA.

Produced by the Simons Foundation.

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