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Hubble Snaps Pix Of Dying Supernova

Posted by Hemos on from the explosion-of-a-thousand-suns dept.

The Hubble has taken some great pictures of a supernova according to CNN. You can get a more indepth article, and more pictures from Space.com story on the same subject. Purty explosions!

2 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Semi-OT : Bigger Pictures? by HellKrisp · · Score: 5, Informative

    This big enough? :) (got from here)

  2. Aspheric explosions by Beryllium+Sphere(tm) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That passing line in the space.com article about lack of symmetry connects to some interesting physics.

    Scientists were embarrassed for a while by the fact that the most realistic computer models of supernovae would fizzle instead of exploding. A simulated shock wave would start from the core, but with the mass of a star falling in on it the shock wave always stalled.

    Then they switched from 1-dimensional simulations to 2-dimensional simulations when they got hold of enough computer power. Turns out there's an overturn instability. The shock wave can't make it out *on average* but does locally. Some small fluctuation gets bigger as the shock wave pounds at it and that direction gets more of the action.

    Which explained an old observation that a lot of supernova remnants were moving pretty fast. Among other things, the supernova is a rocket engine with peak power equal to the luminosity of a galaxy, and (forgive me) astronomical amounts of propellant.

    That was a qualitative insight from a quantitative increase in computer power.