But he got America to spend billions upon billions of dollars on weapons, on underground shelters that he believed could save most people in a nuclear attack and on Star Wars.

ECONOMIST: Edward Teller

When nuclear fusion uses up a star's fuel, in the central high-pressure stellar core where fusion occurs, the star will collapse fairly violently.

CNN: Why gamma-ray burst shocked scientists

Theory suggests that a certain type of giant, short-lived star can experience catastrophic collapse when the nuclear reactions at its core can no longer support its mass.

BBC: Telescope spies cataclysmic blast

These new models of failed supernovae demonstrate how both normal brightness and extremely dim supernovae are generated from the same basic picture of a nuclear-burning white dwarf star, he added.

FORBES: When A Supernova ... Fizzles

Those white dwarf stars that find themselves near a "companion" star can draw material from their neighbour, building up to a critical mass and eventually sparking nuclear fusion again in a nova.

BBC: Gamma rays from nova explosion surprise astronomers