Star struck

摘要

I'm looking at a glass cube that is as wide as the wings of a Boeing 737. It is supported by a framework of gleaming metal trusses, and almost filling the space inside is a pure white sphere encircled by ramps. The sphere, looking for all the world like something from a Stanley Kubrick film, contains our Universe. Which perhaps explains why I have so many astrophysicists with me as I walk inside. Moments later we are watching the stars swarm in giddy, stomach churning loops overhead. It's breathtaking; we see two stars on a near-collision course become a spinning binary system. Then the spinning couple collides with another star and sends all three stars skittering off in different directions. For everyone involved it's an awe-inspiring sight. "These are phenomena that I've studied but never seen before," admits my neighbour James Lombardi, an astrophysicist at Vassar College near New York.