Quote:
Originally Posted by Kwalish Kid
You confuse two different aspects of supernova research: 1) their composition, 2) their phenomenological properties.
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Most of the time, this is a valid syllogism, but supernova research is exceptional. The essential assumption in using supernova as standard candles is that the mass of each-and-every 'type Ia' event is very near the Chandrashakar critical mass of 1.6 solar. In ~1994 Liebengut and others used this anticipated property to establish that there is time-dilation in the most distant supernova observations, the evidence of which is the much longer and therefore time-dilated light curves.
As a purely phenomenological assumption, this is no longer valid: We have seen light-curves in near-local supernova events that are longer than the light-curves available in 1994. So the question today should be: Are the more distant events more like the average, or more like the brightest and slowest burning of the locally-observed supernova events? This is where polarity, nickel content, expansion velocity, light curve shape, environment and other measurements of diversity in supernova events becomes critical. Once we know what makes some supernova events burn brighter and last longer, we can revisit the light curves of the most distant events and determine if they are truly time-dilated.