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Home > News > Tags > supernova
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The vast majority of stars end their lives through supernova explosions while others, more massive, are thought unable to produce such explosions simply because they implode and collapse under their own weight only to produce a black hole. Since these particular types of stellar death don't generate brilliant em... |
10 May 2008
03:44 GMT |
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The Argonne Blue Gene/P supercomputer may be the most powerful in the world but it will still require 22 million computational hours in order to simulate a process that in real life only takes 5 seconds to unfold. Robert Fisher and Cal Jordan from the University of Chicago's Center for Astrophysical Thermonuclea... |
5 May 2008
04:29 GMT |
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Most stars in the universe, including our Sun, end their lives as white dwarfs, highly dense objects burning the leftovers of the nuclear fuel of what used to be the core of the star during most of its life. These objects can be so dense that they can pack a mass of about 1.5 times that of the Sun into a volume compa... |
5 May 2008
02:57 GMT |
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A comparison between supernova explosions taking place today and those that occurred early in the life of the universe reveals that the latter appear to age slower, as if time was warped somehow. It may look as counterintuitive or even impossible to some of us, but in fact, this is confirmed by the inflation theory, ... |
29 April 2008
02:51 GMT |
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According to astrophysicists, the Sun is about 5 billion years old and will continue to shine for at least as much time before exploding into a supernova to destroy the whole solar system. Latest calculations reveal that the inner rocky planets, including Earth, will be destroyed long before the Sun even swells into ... |
23 April 2008
05:48 GMT |
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By using the Chandra X-ray Space Observatory and the XMM-Newton Space Observatory, astronomers were able to observe a light echo originating from a supernova explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which was first observable from Earth nearly 400 years ago. The supernova remnant, dubbed SNR 0509-67.5, lies 160,000 l... |
21 April 2008
08:27 GMT |
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With the help of observations made with NASA, JAXA and ESA's X-ray satellites, astronomers revealed that the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, dubbed Sagittarius A*, suffered a massive outburst some three centuries ago. Sagittarius A* is about 4 million times more massive than the Sun, however... |
16 April 2008
02:52 GMT |
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Three weeks ago, the Swift satellite detected the brightest gamma-ray burst in the visible universe in a galaxy located more than 7 billion light years away from Earth. It is though that the supernova explosion could have been the result of the collapse of a massive star into a black hole, and that, during the explos... |
12 April 2008
03:47 GMT |
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Previous stellar models showed very clearly that all stars must go through a supernova stage at the end of their lives; however, a new study reveals that supermassive stars may not be able to generate supernova explosions, but they would rather suffer a sudden gravitational collapse to turn into a black hole. But if ... |
7 April 2008
08:57 GMT |
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Nickel 56 is one of nickel's unstable isotopes which is not occurring naturally here on Earth. However, it is formed during the supernova explosion at the end of a star's life. Physicists from the IPN Orsay and the GANIL claim they have been able to compress the nucleus of Nickel 56 for the first time, in o... |
1 April 2008
10:25 GMT |
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NGC 2397 is just another spiral galaxy presenting prominent dust lanes along its arms; older stars in its central regions and newly forming stars in the spiral arms are shown blue in this image. The galaxy is located about 60 million light-years away from Earth, however the Hubble Space Telescope is still able to pro... |
1 April 2008
04:06 GMT |
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Stars spend most of their lives burning hydrogen through nuclear fusion reactions to produce the energy required to remain stable as long as possible. By doing so, two hydrogen atoms are fused together to create a single helium atom and a fair amount of energy. However, at some point in time, the star will begin proc... |
21 March 2008
06:47 GMT |
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The Large Magellanic Cloud is a small galaxy in the Local Group only 160,000 light years away from Earth. Recently, NASA's Chandra X-ray Space Observatory discovered a large supernova remnant that contains large amounts of oxygen. The N132D supernova remnant is part of an oxygen-rich remnant and the brightest fe... |
18 March 2008
04:31 GMT |
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The Geminga pulsar was created about 340,000 years ago through the supernova explosion of a regular star, inside what is now called the Geminga supernova. It is well known that supernovae can provide with the required energy to accelerate energetic elementary particles into interstellar space, the so-called cosmic ra... |
8 March 2008
07:01 GMT |
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It would certainly appear so, and considering that our galaxy is filled with at least 200 billion stars, it would be no surprise if one of these rays of death would decide to hit our planet some day. However, the subject of discussion here is a star dubbed WR104, located about 8,000 light years from Earth in the Sagi... |
6 March 2008
03:48 GMT |
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Take a good look at the picture of this nebula, this is how our solar system will look like in about 5 billion years or so. NGC 2371's glowing bubble of gas surrounding a white dwarf is a planetary nebula probably resulted in the explosion of an average star, relatively similar to the Sun. All that is left of th... |
4 March 2008
10:45 GMT |
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X-ray images of the Kes75 supernova remnant shows it to house what seems to be a rapidly spinning neutron star, commonly known as a pulsar, which could have been created in the outcome of the supernova explosion. Lying at a distance of about 20,000 light years away from Earth, Kes75's pulsar located close to the... |
1 March 2008
04:31 GMT |
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Interstellar clouds of dust and gas pulled together by gravitational forces often experience instabilities, that can result in spectacular explosions such as that of a supernova. Furthermore, if the individual atoms that compose the respective cloud of gas behave like tiny magnets, the same outcome could be experienc... |
29 February 2008
10:24 GMT |
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Supernova SN 2007on was discovered last year in the location of what previously was a binary system, composed of at least one white dwarf and another stellar companion, most likely a regular slightly more massive star or possibly a second white dwarf. It is now known that the supernova is a Type Ia, meaning it was de... |
14 February 2008
03:46 GMT |
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The Polar Research Institute of China has completed the installation of the robotic observatory PLATeau only after two weeks from their arrival at the Dome Argus location on the Antarctic continent, the highest point of the Antarctic Plateau. PLATO has been built by the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, and i... |
4 February 2008
09:23 GMT |
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Supernova explosions are generally triggered by a unbalance between the gravitational force produced by the star and the thermonuclear fusion reactions. Nonetheless, astronomers argue that such explosions could be determined through more stronger interactions, like those between a white dwarf and a medium size black ... |
30 January 2008
04:49 GMT |
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Imagine staying younger and fit for a longer time just by eating, instead of getting older and fat... if only this process would be available for all of us. Last week took place the annual American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas, where astronomers presented the results of some of the latest studies con... |
18 January 2008
08:54 GMT |
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The universe is practically littered with corpses of dead stars, or at least the visible part of the universe is. In fact, most of the matter forming the Earth comes from the bodies of one or more stars that shed part of their material at the end of their lives. However, not all the stars come to share the same fate.... |
15 January 2008
02:53 GMT |
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What seems to be a single object in the image provided by the Gemini Observatory is actually a structure formed by two separate different supernova explosions, which could have taken place about a few thousands years ago. The object located in the Large Magellanic Cloud was discovered in the early 1970 and classified... |
11 January 2008
09:25 GMT |
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ESA's gamma-ray space observatory, Integral, detected what seems to be a mysterious cloud of antimatter in the close vicinity of the Milky Way's central core, and its specific shape seems to point towards its origins, as previously there were no valid theories regarding the processes which could be held res... |
10 January 2008
05:42 GMT |
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Supernovae explosions are some of the most powerful releases of energy in the universe known to man. A possible explosion of the Sun, predicted to occur in about 5 billion years in the future, would most likely destroy all the life on Earth, and possibly the entire solar system. Luckily, until this event would take ... |
8 January 2008
08:48 GMT |
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Representing one of the brightest stellar explosions seen this year, the GRB 070125 was discovered on the 25th of January with the Palomar robotic space telescope, operated by the Inter-Planetary Network. It is not the intensity of the glow that seems to present too much interest to astronomers since supernova explos... |
19 December 2007
04:00 GMT |
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Once believed to be a type of black holes, neutron stars usually form during the late stages of a star's life. They have masses ranging from 1.4 to 2.1 times that of the Sun and compact the matter in a volume from 20 to 40 kilometers in diameter, causing all matter that falls on their surface to disintegrate int... |
18 December 2007
05:58 GMT |
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Nebulae inside the Milky Way galaxy often receive high amounts of hot gas ejected by stars inside, which makes them emit radiation in the X-ray spectrum. Discovering these X-ray signatures could provide new information about young stars, which may hold secrets about the solar system and the planetary formation. The O... |
30 November 2007
06:42 GMT |
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SN 2006gy is the brightest supernova ever observed. It was first discovered last year, in the constellation Perseus, about 240 million light years away, when during an explosion it displayed a luminosity one hundred times more than a typical supernova. Since there is no theoretical explanation for this event, two tea... |
15 November 2007
03:16 GMT |
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The first dinosaur fossils were recognized in the nineteenth century, and quickly began to represent a major attraction for museum visitors, and spawned a whole culture among children and adults, featuring in different movies and best-seller books.Dinosaurs formed one of the most successful groups ever to live on Ea... |
5 November 2007
02:58 GMT |
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The massive explosion of the Supernova 2006gz was at first thought to have been the death of a star, as it usually occurs, but high contents of heavy elements seem to shatter this idea. Located in a spiral galaxy named IC 1277, about 300 million light years away in the Hercules constellation, SN 2006gz shows strong e... |
2 November 2007
04:19 GMT |
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Astronomers can now better understand how some stars die and how they disperse elements into the next generation of stars and planets. New images from G292.0+1.8 – one of three supernova remnants in the Milky Way that contain large amounts of oxygen at a distance of 20,000 light years – show rapid expansion, intricat... |
26 October 2007
06:31 GMT |
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Not all stars end in a supernova, but those which do produce one of the most impressive and mysterious phenomena of the Universe, which, although intensively studied in the last decades, is far from being completely understood.A team of scientists at the European Southern Observatory now say they found out what fuel... |
13 July 2007
05:48 GMT |
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The earliest recorded supernova, SN 185, was viewed by Chinese astronomers in 185 AD. Modern day scientists think they have pretty much figured its formation mechanisms. But it seems the Universe still holds some surprises.For the first time, NASA's Swift satellite observed two supernovae faring up in a distan... |
27 June 2007
10:48 GMT |
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In a vacuum, light travels at a speed of nearly 300,000 km/s (186,282 mi/s) and it's generally believed that matter cannot exceed this speed. Recently, astronomers discovered matter traveling at more than 99.999% the speed of light.It's the fastest speed ever recorded in the case of matter in the universe,... |
14 June 2007
17:06 GMT |
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A massive star, burning brighter than our Star, eventually depletes its helium in the core, and without any source of heat to balance the gravity, the core collapses until it reaches nuclear densities. This produces a supernova explosion.For the first time, astronomers discovered a star that seems to have died twice... |
14 June 2007
16:56 GMT |
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The Crab Nebula has been a real puzzle for astronomers for the past century, since the measured age didn't correspond to historical accounts. Now, a team of scientists recalculated its explosion date and finally solved the longstanding riddle.It is a supernova remnant in the constellation of Taurus, first obser... |
1 June 2007
10:44 GMT |
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Astronomers were able to observe for the first time the properties of a giant binary system consisting of the most massive and luminous types of stars in the Universe. Called LH54-425, the pair of stars orbiting each other is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.The Large Magell... |
29 May 2007
15:26 GMT |
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A team of astronomers discovered this year the first known triple quasar, a space oddity, since the statistical probability of the existence of such a quasar says it's an extremely rare association.Quasars are extremely bright and distant astronomical objects thought to be the active nuclei of young galaxies. M... |
28 May 2007
16:36 GMT |
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Most astronomers believe that our solar system formed from the gravitational collapse of a giant molecular cloud, which was likely several light-years across and probably birthed several stars. But a new find contradicts that nebular hypothesis, saying it wasn't a black hole that gave birth to the Sun and the p... |
25 May 2007
06:53 GMT |
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Mysterious observations of variable stars have recently been made by astronomers. The unusual thing about these stars is the fact that they change in brightness, increasing and then rapidly decreasing it. They think there may be a new category of stars, whose brightening events are dimmer than the cataclysmic explos... |
24 May 2007
08:14 GMT |
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Astronomers have just detected the brightest explosion of a star ever recorded, a huge new breed of supernova more than 100 times bigger than any one observed so far.The violent blast was photographed by both terrestrial telescopes and NASA's orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory in a galaxy far from our own Milky... |
8 May 2007
02:39 GMT |
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From time to time, a huge explosion followed by a bright flash of light can be observed in space. It's a colossal gamma-ray burst (GRB), emitting for a few seconds as much radiation as a million galaxies.They are the most luminous events known in the universe since the Big Bang. They are flashes of gamma rays,... |
1 May 2007
16:31 GMT |
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It is the general belief of astronomers that planets are created in flat disks of gas and dust, called protoplanetary disks, which swirl around young, cool stars, and are slowly drawn together by a forming gravitation nucleus. According to standard planet-formation theory, over millions of years the particles clump ... |
19 April 2007
03:00 GMT |
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Telescope imaging confirms what astronomers have theorized based on computer simulations. Dr Chris Wareing an his colleagues, based at Jodrell Bank Observatory, UK, have found evidence that giant whirlpools form in the wake of stars as they move through clouds in interstellar space.Initially, Dr Wareing and his coll... |
18 April 2007
03:00 GMT |
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A neutron star is one of the few possible endpoints of stellar evolution. A neutron star is formed from the collapsed remnant of a massive star after a supernova, and has a mass between 1.35 to about 2.1 solar masses, with a corresponding radius between 20 and 10 km (they shrink as their mass increases), 30 000 to 7... |
14 April 2007
06:58 GMT |
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In nature, symmetry is the sign of beauty. Even humans find symmetrical faces to be the most beautiful. If this were to be applied to stars, then astronomers may have found the newest supermodel of the skies.Named Red Square (no connection with the famous Moscow central square), the bipolar nebula is the most symmet... |
13 April 2007
04:45 GMT |
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The earliest recorded supernova, SN 185, was viewed by Chinese astronomers in 185 AD. Modern day scientists think they have pretty much figured its formation mechanisms.But recently-observed supernova is making some astrophysicists doubt prevailing theories for how stars die. The massive star, located in galaxy UGC ... |
6 April 2007
05:43 GMT |
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A white dwarf is what stars like our Sun become after they have exhausted their nuclear fuel. Near the end of its nuclear burning stage, such a star expels most of its outer material, creating a planetary nebula. Only the hot core of the star remains. This core becomes a very hot (T > 100,000K) young white dwarf, wh... |
28 March 2007
02:45 GMT |
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