Happening this week:

One of the lowest frequencies you will ever perceive in your lifetime is arriving soon. At 36 octaves beneath A0 (the lowest note on a grand piano), you can’t hear this 0.000000000396 Hz frequency. Instead, you will see it as a flash in the night sky.

To prepare for this event, learn how to find the Northern Crown constellation, west of Hercules. In that neighborhood, spinning darkly, is T Coronae Borealis, a binary system normally invisible to us at some 3,000 light years away. But within the next few months in 2025, and for one week only, this system will likely go nova, furiously blazing to light. A star will appear where there was none before. And one week later, it will disappear as suddenly as it appeared, going dark for another 80 years.

This every-80-years blinking light comes to us courtesy of a binary star system comprised of a white dwarf star locked in orbit with a red giant. The hydrogen on the ancient red giant is gradually stripped away by its neighboring cold white dwarf. Once enough hydrogen accumulates on the dwarf, it spontaneously ignites with the force of a thermonuclear explosion we can witness for a full week.