I'm not questioning that a tremendous amount of energy would be released as the star blasts through interstellar material. The question is how can that matter continue to emit energy so long after the source of energy is long gone. Note that the brightness of the tail is fairly similar for a very long time/distance. The star passes by, shedding some of its matter and the collision emits a lot of energy. A kind of wake is left behind, but instead of continuing to expand (and interact with more matter), it just emits radiation near where the star passed, and at a similar level for tens of thousands of years.

In the case of a supernova remnant, there is an expanding shell of (a vastly greater amount of) matter that continues to slam into the surrounding material. When a supernova first blows up it can outshine the galaxy it's in. The expanding shell of material continues to sweep up more matter and the whole system grows much dimmer very quickly. Also, a supernova remnant (usually?/always?) has a continuing source of energy from whatever is left over at the center.

As I wrote to KP, I'm definitely not an astrophysicist - just trying to wrap my head around this really weird phenomenon.

re: velocity - The 64km/s (≈ 143000mph) is radial velocity, so I guess it's not relevant, but I can't find any reference to its linear(?) velocity, i.e., velocity relative to the material it's shedding.

I'm pretty confident it's not releasing energy on the scale of a supernova. Material from a supernova is ejected at much higher velocities (orders of magnitude greater). And doesn't the remaining neutron star or black hole continue to provide energy to the surrounding shell?

Astronomers are not totally sure about the ultraviolet fluoresence of the Mira trail. They think the bow shock of this star (the star is travelling at almost 300,000 miles per hour relative to the matter the star is colliding with) is producing enough heat to cause the gas to fluoresce. Think HUGE amounts of REALLY hot matter spread out in a gigantic tail in an environment with little conductive or convective heat loss. This thing would glow for a long time. (Like nebula surrounding the remains of a supernova where only the released energy of the event long ago has the shells of gas still glowing.)

I totally just figured out how to induce a supernova, IRL, without any modifications to the laws of physics. Just launch a small black hole towards a star. If the black hole is charged, it can be aimed and accelerated by electromagnets. When it enters the star it will grow and slow, emitting massive amounts of gamma radiation as it consumes the core of the star. It would cause an explosion which would probably resemble type II supernovae.
But how could a tiny black hole be manufactured? A 1kg black hole would emit 3*10^32 watts (more than a thousand suns) of hawking radiation, for the instant before it fizzles. That radiation is inversely proportional to the square of mass, so particle accelerators can't make long-lived black holes. At a billion kg, it'd have a lifetime in the thousands of years and a luminosity around 10^14 watts, which is relatively manageable but much more difficult to make. For reference, a 100m x 100m x 100m cube of water weighs 1 billion kg. I have no idea how the heck to make a 1 billion kg black hole, but it's not necessarily impossible.

Somebody has a sword fetish. Clearly, trilithium torpedos that cause star supernovae beat the death star by a factor of about a quadrillion.

so yeah, unfortunately, due to the lameness of the internet, we are not really understanding each other.

If you ask me rationally, using conventional vocabulary, and contemporary understandings of the world, then i am an atheist.

I am what most people would call an atheist because I do not believe in a father figure in a cloud, or a shining light in a distant galaxy or something.

But literally, i believe God is Love.
I believe Love exists (not just chemicals and selfish genes). Therefore I believe God exists.

Even if science has an explanation for something, that doesn't mean the scientific explanation is correct, it just means the scientific explanation fits. Newton's explanations worked for a few hundred years until we discovered other stuff which contradicted Newton.
The same will happen again and again.

I guess you could say (in your style) I believe in a Creator, because science still doesn't understand the start of all this, and it is perfectly possible that a Creator "invented" science, fractals, evolution, the internet and supernovae.

God is Sigma, everything, the sum of all that is. Therefore if you believe stuff exists, then welcome to my religion.

Maybe i got closer to explaining it this time, although entering the cutanddried world of typed text is dangerous because it's easier to turn my words round and get all logical with me.

Stephen Colbert is funny because he is a little bit right.

Not everyone has to be a scientist. I could teach anyone the theory of music and show them how air vibrations inside a trumpet work... but only a few people have ever actually been able to play music really well, and some of them weren't even taught. Get me?

Gotta agree with your previous post on your link above. She is like a fine wine...she just gets better with age. I much prefer her now than when she was younger. And you're right about the supernova. It will be Jennifer Connelly that destroys the Earth, not some silly solar flare or meteor.

Nice!
Can´t wait for the supernova it will create should it ever collide with Evander Holyfield again...

This is the worst song on DDR Supernova. Not a fan of the song, or the group at all. I've no problem with mediocre pop rock, but the airwaves and MTV are flooded with stuff mediocrity, while all sorts of great bands are totally ignored.

Robert Heinlein's "Tunnel in the Sky" - kids in a futuristic survival 'outward bound' type school trip get stranded on an alien planet due to a freak supernova and have to fend for themselves... kind of Lord of the Flies, but cooler.

Or Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"- futuristic Lunar Colony secedes from Earth with the help of a sentient super computer... one of my favorite books, basically parts of it read like a blueprint for revolution, and outlines how to set up resistance cells and civil unrest.

Both could make good movies, provided they had a director willing to look past the possibility of turning them into special effects orgies... like they did with his "Starship Troopers"... which, by the way, was a fantastic little book, and nothing like the movie that shares its name.

His argument seems to be that anyone with more power then you is god. So god is the mayor of your town, the president, the big bang, or even the sun which can go supernova and kill you. This cultist reminds me of a guy who e-mailed me once and claimed god exists because molecules vibrate. These nuts always mention something that science explains but they don't understand and claim it as proof of god (usually the specific one they worship).

To deal with the traffic/popularity problem, let those viddies, that have the potential to soar, or are already soaring other places, have a special viewbar....perhaps a "rising stars" or some clever...nova, supernova,white dwarf etc. scale of progress.........this will keep the chronological page from burying potentials
Hell, put vote-timers on the viddies to solve the mystery of how many how fast....one can get a clue most of the time, what has the potential to soar..... The top 15 already, if you did miss them the 1st time around, gives us all the option to see the showcase...

Descent: FreeSpace — The Great War is a space simulation computer game series developed by Volition Inc., one of the two companies (along with Outrage Entertainment) that formed when Parallax Software, the creators of Descent, split.

FreeSpace 2 takes place 32 years after the events of Descent: FreeSpace. The alliance between the Terrans and Vasudans is sealed with the foundation of the Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance (GTVA). The GTVA campaign in this game is threefold.

Their first priority was in stopping the Neo-Terran Front (NTF) led by Admiral Aken Bosch. Bosch, a veteran of the Galactic Terran Intelligence (GTI), united a group of rogue Terrans under the banner of hatred of Vasudans. Initially, he threatened to destabilize the Alliance and destroy the Vasudan race.

The second priority was the discovery of the Knossos Device, a massive, ring-shaped device believed to have been constructed by the Ancients. In essence, the Knossos appeared to be an artificial portal generator. This obviously interested the Terrans, who were still searching for a way to return to their homeworld Earth.

The third, and most dangerous, was the return of the Shivans. This time, the Shivans have a fearsome new array of ships, including the SJ Sathanas that is over 5.5 kilometers in length.

It remains as the pinnacle example of Space Combat games, with an incredible plot line, story, visuals and sound. The game enjoys a cult following to this day and is freely available on torrent networks, culminating with mod releases under The FreeSpace Source Code Project.

You can get the full game yourself from Hard Light Productions legally for free. In this clip the Shivan armada forces a sun to go supernova during a decisive battle between the GTVA and Shivan forces.

I think she just gets hotter and hotter, depending on her mass, she may supernova one day or simply swell up to become a supergiant.