Chatroom
 

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Go Back   Bad Astronomy and Universe Today Forum > Science and Space > Astronomy
Register FAQ Members List Calendar Mark Forums Read

   

Reply
 
LinkBack Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
  #1 (permalink)  
Old 14-November-2007, 08:23 PM
Fortunate Fortunate is offline
Established Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Miami
Posts: 601
Default How to make the brightest supernova ever: Explode, collapse, repeat

Quote:
A supernova observed last year was so bright--about 100 times as luminous as a typical supernova--that it challenged the theoretical understanding of what causes supernovae. But Stan Woosley, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, had an idea that he thought could account for it--an extremely massive star that undergoes repeated explosions.
http://www.physorg.com/news114269153.html

Quote:
When Woosley and two colleages worked out the detailed calculations for their model, the results matched the observations of the supernova known as SN 2006gy, the brightest ever recorded.
Reply With Quote
  #2 (permalink)  
Old 14-November-2007, 09:06 PM
Noclevername's Avatar
Noclevername Noclevername is offline
Order of Kilopi
 
Join Date: Apr 2007
Posts: 11,083
Default

"A lot of variety is possible, and it gets even more complicated because what's left behind at the end is still about 40 solar masses, and it continues to evolve and eventually makes an iron core and collapses, so you can end up with a gamma-ray burst. The possibilities are very exciting."

Supernova, supernova, supernova, supernova, (pause) BANG! black hole.
__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort
Reply With Quote
  #3 (permalink)  
Old 14-November-2007, 10:42 PM
Fortunate Fortunate is offline
Established Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Miami
Posts: 601
Default

Here is a better article:

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/31801

It explains how such a star might have formed.

Quote:
While Woosley and colleagues have explained how such a bright supernova could occur, the question of how such a massive star could form in the first place has been addressed by Simon Portegies Zwart and Edward van den Heuvel of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
It also gives some idea of the time interval between the first two explosions.

Quote:
Woosley and colleagues tested their hypothesis by doing a computer simulation of the death of a star that began life at 110 solar masses, which suggested that such a star would explode twice in about 5.4 years and then collapse into a neutron star or black hole about 15 years after the first explosion.
Reply With Quote
  #4 (permalink)  
Old 15-November-2007, 08:38 PM
trinitree88 trinitree88 is offline
Established Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Massachusetts
Posts: 3,113
Cool interesting....

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fortunate View Post
Fortunate. Interesting. He's one of the very best, and always worth listening to closely. Like the little guy in the army helmet on "Laugh-in"....velly interesting. Pete.
__________________
A third rate theory forbids.
A second rate theory explains after the fact.
A first rate theory predicts.
A. Lomonosov
Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On



Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Causing a supernova Duane Space/Astronomy Questions and Answers 48 19-May-2006 10:19 PM
Did our sun blow up 5 billion years ago? snowflakeuniverse Against the Mainstream 118 27-September-2005 04:16 AM
Bad Supernova Data Reduction Jerry Against the Mainstream 42 27-June-2004 05:15 AM
Supernova Ia Data Reduction: The Dark Ages of Astronomy Jerry Against the Mainstream 6 15-June-2004 06:12 PM
How to make your own BS Godlike story! ObiWan377 Against the Mainstream 29 19-June-2003 04:10 AM


All times are GMT. The time now is 11:53 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.3
Copyright ©2000 - 2009, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
LinkBacks Enabled by vBSEO 3.0.0
©  2006 Bad Astronomy and Universe Today