Hi all,
I hope this question is appropriate. I had a quick search of /r/AskHistorians but couldn't find the exact question and answer. I also asked this question in /r/askscience but haven't received a response (or it has been filtered out).
I'm aware that one of the first recorded instances of a supernova was around 185AD by some Chinese, but when was events such as Supernovae linked to the life-cycle of stars? Who proposed that stars are not eternal?
As far as I'm aware, Aristotle had the view that stars are permanent, and eternal, and this view was held by the majority of Europe for a long time.
Thanks in advance for your assistance.
Scientist here, not a historian. The earliest mention of the death of stars that I am aware of is this 1862 paper by Lord Kelvin. It's basically just a fairly naïve application of the second law of thermodynamics to the sun. This was published long before anyone had any idea about nuclear fusion, so I wouldn't take his numerical calculations too seriously, but he correctly concludes that the sun could not have been eternal and could not keep shining forever. Essentially, eternal stars violate the second law of thermodynamics.
I'll quote his concluding paragraph here:
It seems, therefore, on the whole most probable that the sun has not illuminated the earth for 100,000,000 years, and almost certain that he has not done so for 500,000,000 years. As for the future, we may say, with equal certainty, that inhabitants of the earth can not continue to enjoy the light and heat essential to their life for many million years longer unless sources now unknown to us are prepared in the great storehouse of creation.
Jean le Rond d'Alembert's article "Étoile" (1756) for thé Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert discusses astronomers who have noted the appearance and disappearance of stars, and remarks that such observations invalidate the ancients' opinion that the matter of stars was permanent and unchangeable. He notes that Hipparchus in 125 BCE observed the appearance of a new star, and that in 1572 Tycho Brahe observed the appearance and disappearance of a star in Cassiopeia.