light - How is it known that Pillars of Creation are destroyed?

This is going to be a short answer, but it should help.

From Wikipedia:

Images taken with the Spitzer Space Telescope uncovered a cloud of hot dust in the vicinity of the Pillars of Creation that one group interpreted to be a shock wave produced by a supernova. The appearance of the cloud suggests a supernova would have destroyed it 6000 years ago. Given the distance of roughly 7000 light years to the Pillars of Creation, this would mean that they have actually already been destroyed, but because of the finite speed of light, this destruction is not yet visible on Earth, but should be visible in about 1000 years. However, this interpretation of the hot dust has been disputed by an astronomer uninvolved in the Spitzer observations, who argues that a supernova should have resulted in stronger radio and x-ray radiation than has been observed, and that winds from massive stars could instead have heated the dust. If this is the case, the Pillars of Creation will undergo a more gradual erosion.

A rough translation:

• The Spitzer Space Telescope took pictures of a large blob of dust near the PoC.


• The cloud is the result of a supernova blowing through the PoC and pushing dust outward.


• Such a supernova would have dissipated the gas and dust in the PoC.

Also, this notes that the SST uses infrared, and as the dust wasn't seen in visible light, we wouldn't have realized from the Hubble photos that there were any effects from a hypothetical supernova.

Note, though, that some dissenters think that something completely different is responsible for the behavior of the dust, and so the PoC may still exist.