As is true of a far more famous story, it all began a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. It even involved a binary star system. A small star, called a white dwarf, had become a burned out husk of its former self and it turned to gorging on hydrogen and helium from its bloated red giant neighbor. The transferred gas reignited the fires of the white dwarf until the temperature from the fusion reaction proved too much for the gravity that struggled to contain it. In the blink of an eye, the star detonated in a supernova, a cosmic maelstrom seen perhaps only once per century in a typical galaxy.