‘Zombie’ Stars Now? Not Hugely Accurate but Less Inflammatory
Look, seriously, journalists out there? Stop calling everything Zombie. Just because something is dormant or acts a little differently or in a way you disapprove of, that does not make it a Zombie, with all the challenges that entails and rights that it SHOULD entail.
Still, at least this most recent example isn’t as patently offensive as many of the others we’ve seen:
“Zombie” stars, or type Ia supernovae, are helping astronomers understand the mysterious force known as dark energy, which is causing the universe to expand at ever-accelerating speeds.
When these stars die, they come back to life by absorbing matter from a companion star, hence their “zombie” nickname. These supernovae shine with the brightness of approximately one billion suns.
Basically, some astronomy boffins want to refine their understanding of these supernovae so they can use them to measure distances in the universe better and thus understand it more deeply. All well and good.
And at least here the stars are *arguably* almost kinda sorta dead for a while, to the extent a star can be dead, not having been alive.
And at least here there’s some Different Animation going on, in that these supernovae work in a dramatically altered way from ordinary stars.
But still; we’re not talking about people, or even animal life, that ceases to be alive, and comes back in a radically new form, or is otherwise similar to an Undead state. White dwarf stars aren’t ever really inert, and were never *alive*, so this is a stretch.
Basically, the media sees a Zombie hook in everything these days. In some cases, like here, it’s more silly than harmful, but for consistency we have to ask that people TRY and refrain from overusing the term ‘Zombie’. It applies to our clients and they’d like to keep it.
Thanks.
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