Supernovas, the catastrophic explosions that follow the collapse of a star, are essential to our understanding of the cosmos. This creates a vicious shockwave that tears through the star’s surface, utterly obliterating it in the process. The finer points of how a supernova shockwave is formed is still somewhat of mystery, since they’re nearly impossible to observe as they happen. When the blast slammed into material surrounding the star, its shape flattened, but continued to expand symmetrically. “The very first [particles of light] and matter do not shoot out spherically from the star’s surface,” Yang told ScienceNews.