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Rethinking How Stars Go Boom - White Dwarf Observed

Posted Sep 21, 2006 at 11:38PM by Ian C. Listed in: Astrophysics, Astronomy, Celestial Bodies Tags: supernova, galaxy
Ó

No. Not this supernova.


Astronomers have recently discovered a supernova so large that it has warranted scientists to question their understanding of how certain older stars disintegrate. Experts have long believed that dying stars known as "white dwarfs" can't expand to more than 1.4 times the size of our sun without going kablooey.

The rule is known as the "Chandrasekhar Limit," and it has served as the foundation of decades and decades of astrophysical research and has been used by scientists to estimate the size of the universe.

In the discovery, the Astronomers have found a supernova in a galaxy 4 billion light years away that reached a mass twice that of the sun before exploding. As always, now that they've seen it, they now have to figure out how nature did it. They think that the star could've been spinning so fast that the centrifugal force pushed it beyond the usual limits. Or the explosion could have come from two white-dwarf stars merging.

Even though the discovered supernova doesn't necessarily undermine other previous research, scientists say that they'll be more cautious about incorporating the Chandrasekhar Limit into their future work. Well, science is all about making discovering new things and maybe making present text books obsolete, but we do hope they succeed in their research.

[Via Reuters] Permalink  |   Email this  |   Linking Blogs   |   Digg It!

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