Antarctica has lost nearly 5,000 square miles of "grounded ice" in 30 years, as warming ocean waters drive retreat in vulnerable regions, a new study finds.
It's strange that a dying star is at the heart of this glowing cloud of gas, ionizing it and lighting it up almost like a living structure, but that's Nature for you. An aging Wolf-Rayet star, which has exhausted its hydrogen core, illuminates the Cat's Eye Nebula from within. The star, catalogued as HD 164963, has suffered episodic mass loss as it ages. Each complex layer in the gaseous nebula represents one episode of mass loss driven by the star's extremely powerful winds.
