I learned yesterday from a local-language article on this news, that the Pillars don't actually exist anymore, for a long time already. We'll gawk at them for several hundred years still, before we see a supernova wipe them away. Supposedly this was discovered with the Spitzer telescope somehow—I'll need to find sources in English, but at least the local publication is not on the grade of Daily Mail.
Edit: sounds like this bit, and the journalists' info is then outdated:
> Evidence from the Spitzer Space Telescope originally suggested that the pillars in M16 may be threatened by a "past supernova". Hot gas observed by Spitzer in 2007 suggested they were already – likely – being disturbed by a supernova that exploded 8,000 to 9,000 years ago. Due to the distance the main blast of light would have reached Earth for a brief time 1,000 to 2,000 years ago. A more slowly moving, theorized, shock wave would have taken a few thousand years to move through the nebula and would have blown away the delicate pillars. However, in 2014 the pillars were imaged a second time by Hubble, in both visible light and infrared light. The images being 20 years later provided a new, detailed account of the rate of evaporation occurring within the pillars. No supernova is evidenced within them, and it is estimated in some form they still exist – and will appear for at least 100,000 more years. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Nebula)
A somewhat different account is in the article for the Pillars themselves, with more external sources:
> Images taken with the Spitzer Space Telescope uncovered a cloud of hot dust in the vicinity of the Pillars of Creation that Nicolas Flagey accounted to be a shock wave produced by a supernova. The appearance of the cloud suggests the supernova shockwave would have destroyed the Pillars of Creation 6,000 years ago. Given the distance of roughly 7,000 light-years to the Pillars of Creation, this would mean that they have actually already been destroyed, but because light travels at a finite speed, this destruction should be visible from Earth in about 1,000 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. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Creation#Theorized_...)
TBH these mechanics are confusing to me, because one of them says the wave will reach the Pillars in a thousand years (from our viewpoint), whereas the other claims that since we don't see the disturbance now, it's all fine and dandy. Coincidentally, no sources are supplied for the latter view.