Xing Liu

In a distant galaxy, at a distance that light takes 11 billion years to cross, something flashed. The Einstein Probe X-ray telescope caught a brief, needle-prick-like burst: it lasted only a few dozen seconds.

In 1987, astronomers saw a supernova flare up in a neighboring galaxy — the Large Magellanic Cloud. It was a rare gift: the explosion was close enough to catch not just light but also neutrinos, those nearly undetectable particles that pass straight through Earth.

A massive star ends its life in a spectacular collapse: the core compresses into a neutron star or a black hole, while the outer layers fly off in a dazzling supernova.