‘Zombie star’ could flare up for the first time in 80 years on Halloween
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
(WASHINGTON) — A “zombie star” could possibly rise from the dead on Halloween night, according to space experts.
T Coronae Borealis, also known as the “Blaze Star,” is expected to explode violently in the near future, illuminating a long-dead binary star system for the first time in 80 years, according to NASA.
The Blaze Star has become a white dwarf, which happens when stars have exhausted their nuclear fuels.
“It’s basically a dead star,” NASA astrophysicist Padi Boyd told ABC News. “It’s not burning anything.”
The dead star has a comparable mass to Earth’s sun, according to NASA. By contrast, Earth’s sun is constantly burning elements such as hydrogen and helium, Boyd said.
The Blaze Star is part of a binary system; it has a companion star — a red giant star — that it “gobbles” material from, Boyd said. Material such as hydrogen is transferred by a strong gravitational pull, according to NASA.
“Like a vampire,” the white dwarf sucks material from its companion star, Boyd said. The material sits on the surface of the white dwarf until there is enough material to ignite a thermonuclear runaway explosion — a buildup of pressure and heat. This allows the “dead” star to become “very, very bright,” she added.
Every eight decades, when the Blaze Star system bursts into a bright light, it becomes visible to the naked eye, Boyd said.
“It’ll become as bright as some of the stars we see on the constellations at night,” she said.
The first recorded sighting of the Blaze Star was in the autumn of 1217, when a German priest and chronicler named Burchard of Ursperg observed “a faint star that for a time shone with great light,” according to NASA.
It was last seen from Earth in 1946, according to the space research agency.
It is difficult to predict when a nova — a process in which a star shows a sudden large increase in brightness — will occur, Boyd said.
“This explosion, it could happen tonight; it could happen a year from now or six months or a couple of weeks,” Boyd said. “We know it’s coming soon.”
The Northern Crown is a horseshoe-shaped curve of stars west of the Hercules constellation, according to NASA. In the Northern Hemisphere, it can be identified by finding the two brightest stars — Arcturus and Vega — and tracking a straight line from one to the other, leading stargazers to Hercules and the Corona Borealis.
The outburst is expected to be brief. The nova, when a star shows a sudden large increase in brightness, will only be visible to the naked eye for less than a week, according to NASA.
To astronomy enthusiasts, it will appear as if a new star appeared in the sky, Boyd said.
“It’ll look like the jewel in the crown of the corona,” she said.
Scientists are hoping to study the nova to discover what happens when the material is blasted from the white dwarf and distributed into neighboring galaxies, Boyd said.
The material includes elements such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and neon. Other stars will gather this material as they are forming their own solar systems, Boyd added.
“This is where that material in our own solar system — in our planet, in the oceans, in our bones, in our blood — those materials come from stellar explosions,” Boyd said.
The excitement surrounding the event is expected to “fuel the next generation of scientists,” Rebekah Hounsell, an assistant research scientist specializing in nova events at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement earlier this year.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event that will create a lot of new astronomers out there, giving young people a cosmic event they can observe for themselves, ask their own questions, and collect their own data,” Hounsell said.
(NEW YORK) — The contentious debate surrounding New York City’s struggle to address homelessness and mental illness has clouded the memory of who Jordan Neely was.
But to some who cared for him, Neely is remembered for breaking out into dance and singing along with the hits on the radio as a joyous child.
He’s remembered as a teen who struggled to cope with the loss of his best friend — his mother — who was violently murdered.
He’s remembered for entertaining commuters, tourists, and locals alike with moonwalks and side glides that rivaled Michael Jackson on the NYC subways.
Neely’s family had imagined a great future ahead for him: “I said, ‘Jordan, one day you might be famous,” Neely’s great aunt Mildred Mahazu told ABC News. “And he said, ‘Really, Aunt Mildred?'”
But by the age of 30, Neely was homeless and appeared to be experiencing a mental illness crisis when he was killed after a subway passenger named Daniel Penny held him in a six-minute-long chokehold, officials said.
Penny, a former Marine, was charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in Neely’s death. He pleaded not guilty, arguing that Neely had been threatening to passengers on the train. Other witnesses reportedly told police that Neely had been yelling and harassing passengers. Penny’s trial begins on Oct. 21 with jury selection.
Neely’s death sparked citywide protests, demanding answers about city resources after reports showed dozens of interactions between Neely and both police and homeless services in the years leading up to his death.
Two of Neely’s loved ones reflected on the life and death in interviews with ABC News ahead of Penny’s trial.
Neely’s life
Neely’s childhood was rocky, according to Mahazu. He and his mother, Christie Neely, were housing insecure — sometimes living in homeless shelters — and his mother’s tumultuous relationship with her boyfriend filled some days with arguments. But amid the instability, Neely’s relationship with his mother blossomed.
The two were inseparable. Everywhere Christie went, Neely followed: “You see one, you see the other,” Mahazu said.
Before heading off to school each morning, Neely would knock at his mother’s door, wake her up and tell her goodbye.
On April 3, 2007, then-14-year-old Neely tried to go about his routine and say goodbye to his mother before school, but her boyfriend, Shawn Southerland, had blocked him from entering their bedroom, according to local news outlet NJ.com.
It was later discovered that Christie had been violently murdered at the hands of now-convicted-murderer Southerland and he dumped her body in a suitcase on a Bronx parkway, according to local reports.
Mahazu believes the tragedy changed the trajectory of Neely’s life. He was a teen, heartbroken and unable to grasp the loss.
Mahazu said she would catch Neely sitting with a far-off look in his eye, sometimes rocking side to side. She’d ask him what was wrong and recalled him once saying, “I miss my mama. I want my mama.”
“They loved each other dearly. They were crazy about each other,” Mahazu said. “From there on, he started going down, down, down, because he and his mother were extremely close, very close,” Mahazu said.
In the years after her death, Neely found solace in his love of dancing and made the NYC MTA subway system his stage, busking for money as a Michael Jackson impersonator.
New Yorker Moses Harper first remembers meeting Neely in August 2009, when she followed the sound of Michael Jackson’s greatest hits in the halls of the Times Square subway station.
Harper, a Michael Jackson tribute artist herself, remembers finding Neely mid-performance, surrounded by a crowd of tourists clapping to the rhythm and following Neely’s encouragement to dance alongside him.
Neely spotted and called on Harper, who was watching from the back of the crowd: “Show me something. Come on. Don’t be scared,” Harper recalls that he yelled out to her. Armed with a single glove in her back pocket on her way home from her dance studio, she surprised Neely with Jackson moves of her own.
“When it was all over, I gave him his hat back and he hugged me. He’s like, ‘You got to teach me, you got to show me.’ And I did,” said Harper.
It was the beginning of a friendship that would last years: “We wouldn’t just talk about Michael Jackson and dancing. We talked about other things, you know, and I missed that. I missed that. That was my little brother.”
She remembers when Neely first told her about his mother: “What was the one person in the world that really got him. And I had never seen him that sad.”
During those years, it was hard for Mahazu to keep track of him riding through the subway system. But he’d come and visit her often, and she’d fix up a big country dinner, and they’d sit and talk over their meal.
Homelessness and mental illness in New York One day, when Harper was riding the D train into the Bronx, she spotted Neely walking through the train cars. She recalled him looking noticeably homeless and asking for food or money.
She said his face lit up when he saw her, but he kept walking past, which Harper speculates was because of embarrassment. Harper said she stopped him, escorted him off the train, hugged him and asked him what was going on.
She bought him Chinese food, and something to drink, gave him cash and one of the shirts she had layered on.
“I said, ‘Listen to me: When you’re ready to get clean, this is where I am. Come and see me. I want you to come see me,'” she said. “It wasn’t what he needed at the time. And it just wasn’t. It just wasn’t enough. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
A community of Michael Jackson fans and tribute artists in NYC continued to search for Neely over the years after he stopped arriving at events and meetups. But local health officials and law enforcement said they knew him well.
According to police sources, Neely had a documented mental health history and had been previously arrested for several incidents, including assault, disorderly conduct and fare evasion.
The New York Times reported that Neely was on a list of the top 50 sheltered or homeless “high need individuals” to be reached by NYC outreach workers at the time of his death. According to New York Magazine, he bounced around shelters that have been criticized for their poor conditions and had also been hospitalized several times.
The Department of Social Services, the New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene and the NYPD declined to comment further on Neely’s case and why the efforts to contact or address Neely’s needs did not work.
Those who knew Neely have demanded answers.
“If you had had the background that Jordan nearly had, how would you fare in life? Where would you be? Where would your mental state be if you had the same kind of struggles that he had?” Harper said. “How would you be doing right now? Do you think that you would deserve the same? The same treatment that he received on the last day of his life? “
The Adams administration criticized “the system” Jordan went through: “That was a real textbook case of how if you ignore the problem over and over and over again, it could turn out to be a tragic outcome.”
Adams condemned Neely’s killing in the days following the death: “Jordan Neely did not deserve to die,” Adams said in prepared remarks amid growing calls for Penny’s arrest. He was not immediately arrested following Neely’s death.
“Jordan Neely’s life mattered. He was suffering from severe mental illness, but that was not the cause of his death. His death is a tragedy that never should have happened,” the mayor said, referring to Neely as “a Black man like me.”
In recent years, homelessness in New York City has reached the highest levels since the Great Depression, according to city officials.
Neely’s death took place following an announcement from New York City Mayor Eric Adams that individuals who appear “to be mentally ill” and “a danger to themselves” may be taken into custody involuntarily for psychiatric evaluations if they may be of harm, even if they are not considered to be an imminent threat to the public. The city has yet to release data about the outcomes of these programs and their effectiveness.
However, in a recent Department of Homeless Services announcement, city officials say 7,800 New Yorkers have been connected to shelter and 640 of them have been connected to permanent affordable housing since the city began an intensified approach to homelessness.
“They failed Jordan, they fail so many of the vulnerable members of a vulnerable population,” said Harper, calling for systemic reforms to fix the criminal justice and health care systems.
(GREEN LAKE, Wis.) — Ryan Borgwardt, the husband and father who authorities said faked his own death at a lake and fled the country, has returned to the U.S. willingly and is now in custody in Wisconsin, the Green Lake County Sheriff’s Office announced on Wednesday.
Borgwardt — who is accused of intentionally misleading authorities to believe he drowned this summer — notified officials he was returning and he landed in the U.S. on Tuesday, Sheriff Mark Podoll said at a news conference, but the sheriff did not reveal from where he flew.
Podoll said authorities are still putting together where Borgwardt was and who he was with since he vanished in August, but said he’s “cooperated” with law enforcement.
Borgwardt “researched other individuals that had successfully disappeared recently,” including lake deaths and “how deep a body has to be without resurfacing,” according to the criminal complaint.
When he was abroad and trying to stay under the radar, Borgwardt said he checked the news but usually avoided clicking on articles, the complaint said. The criminal complaint mentions Borgwardt having been in the country of Georgia.
Borgwardt said when he did click on a news article, “he would use a VPN and sometimes make it look like he was in Russia or somewhere else other than Georgia,” the complaint said. “Ryan stated that he knew that Georgia would have to extradite him and he wanted to be informed and prepared.”
Asked what compelled Borgwardt to come back, Podoll said, “His family, I guess.”
Podoll did not say if Borgwardt has had contact with his wife and children.
Borgwardt, who is charged with obstructing an officer, made his first court appearance on Wednesday. He faces up to a $10,000 fine and nine months in prison for alleged obstruction of an officer.
A signature bond was set at $500, since he “voluntarily turned himself in” from “halfway around the world,” the judge said. When the judge asked if he could afford any bail, Borgwardt replied, “I have $20 in my wallet.”
The case began on Aug. 11, when Borgwardt texted his wife that he was turning his kayak around on Green Lake and heading to shore soon, Podoll said.
But the dad of three never came home.
Responders found Borgwardt’s overturned kayak and life jacket in the lake and believed he drowned, officials said.
Crews scoured the lake for weeks using divers, drones, sonar and cadaver K-9s, but never found him, officials said.
In October, investigators discovered Borgwardt’s name had been checked by law enforcement in Canada two days after he vanished on the lake, the sheriff said.
Authorities also learned Borgwardt had been communicating with a woman from Uzbekistan, the sheriff said.
Borgwardt’s other suspicious behavior included: clearing his browsers the day he disappeared, inquiring about moving funds to foreign banks, obtaining a new passport and getting a new life insurance policy, the sheriff said.
Authorities determined Borgwardt was alive and likely in Eastern Europe or western Asia, but they didn’t know exactly where he was located. Authorities made contact with a woman who speaks Russian, and in November, they reached Borgwardt through that woman, authorities said.
Borgwardt said when he got the email from authorities, his “heart hit the floor,” the complaint said.
Borgwardt told police he was safe but didn’t reveal his location, the sheriff said.
Borgwardt did reveal to authorities how he faked his death.
“He stashed an e-bike near the boat launch. He paddled his kayak in a child-sized floating boat out into the lake. He overturned the kayak and dumped his phone in the lake,” the sheriff said at a news conference in November. “He paddled the inflatable boat to shore and got on his e-bike and rode through the night to Madison, [Wisconsin]. In Madison, he boarded a bus and went to Detroit, and then the Canadian border.”
Borgwardt said the Canadian Border Patrol was “suspicious” that he didn’t have a driver’s license or flight itinerary with him, but “ultimately, they allowed him to continue,” according to the complaint.
At the airport in Toronto, Borgwardt said he bought a flight to Paris.
On the plane, Borgwardt said he searched for news in Green Lake and saw “something about the missing kayaker and believes that his plan had worked,” according to the complaint.
After he landed in Paris he flew to a country in Asia, the complaint said.
An unidentified woman picked him up and they went to a hotel where they stayed for a couple of days, the complaint said.
Borgwardt was later in an apartment, according to a video he made for law enforcement.
No one else is facing charges, the sheriff said.
Asked if Borgwardt will be required to reimburse the county for the money spent on the search, Podoll told reporters, “That’s part of the restitution that we present to the court.”
