Pillars of Creation Toppled By Stellar Blast

**In a note sent to me by Shaun Saunders, he suggests that this is very much like his story Curtain Call that we featured in the last episode of Beam Me Up in December of 2006 (bmu #34) I also wanted to add that it also fits very well with the story we will be running this week - Hubble - and look for another tie in with Shaun's heart breaking story Last Light - which we will be featuring in a later broad cast....pac**

The famous Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula might have already been toppled long ago, and that what the Hubble Space Telescope actually captured was only a ghost image.

A new picture of the Eagle Nebula shot by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, show the intact pillars next to a giant cloud of glowing dust scorched by the heat of a massive stellar explosion known as a supernova [image].

"The pillars have already been destroyed by the shockwave," said study leader Nicolas Flagey of The Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale in France.

Astronomers think the supernova's shock wave knocked the pillars down about 6,000 years ago. But because the Eagle Nebula is located some 7,000 light years away, the majestic pillars will appear intact to observers on Earth for another 1,000 years or so.

The supernova blast is thought to have occurred between 6,000 and 9,000 years ago, so what astronomers see now is evidence of the blast just before its destructive shock wave reached the pillars.