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Huge Supernova Baffles Scientists

Posted by timothy on from the like-laser-pointers-to-cats dept.

Iddo Genuth writes "Scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and San Diego State University have observed an explosion of a star 50 times larger than the sun. In what they call a 'first observation of its kind' the scientists were able to notice that most of the star's mass collapsed in on itself, resulting in a creation of a large black hole. While exploding stars, or 'supernovae,' aren't unprecedented, this star, which lay about 200 million light years away from earth and was million times brighter than the Sun, has exploded as a supernova at a much earlier date than the one predicted by astronomers."

19 of 358 comments (clear)

  1. It happens? by mc1138 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Clearly all this proves is that we really don't know that much about what's going on in the universe.

    --
    The musings of just another geek and his junk.
    1. Re:It happens? by AaxelB · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Clearly all this proves is that we really don't know that much about what's going on in the universe.

      Did you ever think we did? We're pretty damn clueless.

      I think we would all do well to remember what Socrates (approximately, probably) said: "The only thing I know is that I know nothing at all."

    2. Re:It happens? by Mt._Honkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Clearly all this proves is that we really don't know that much about what's going on in the universe.

      I'm getting tired these kinds of posts every time something unexpected is observed. Yes, this observation tells us that our knowledge is not perfect. However, these claims that every contradiction between experiment and theory means that scientists don't know very much aren't just wrong but irresponsible, because people believe them.

      The vital point I need to make here is that our finite knowledge is not "all this proves". This proves that 50 solar mass stars can supernova before they shed their hydrogen atmospheres. Now we can take that new piece of knowledge and develop new and better theories about stellar evolution. To just throw are hands up and say "all this proves is that we don't know much" is to overlook a valuable opportunity to advance science.

      --

      Don't Bogart the fish sticks
    3. Re:It happens? by rattaroaz · · Score: 5, Funny

      All your post proves is that that you really don't know all that much about ./ers

    4. Re:It happens? by NewbieProgrammerMan · · Score: 5, Funny

      Damn those DotSlashers!

      --
      [b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
    5. Re:It happens? by similar_name · · Score: 5, Informative

      Socrates thought the earth was round.

    6. Re:It happens? by Henry+Pate · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Surely, if the world's finance "experts" really understood economics, they wouldn't have positioned their companies for the collapses they recently saw. Or did AIG's best and brightest know they were setting their company up for catastrophe?

      Rolling Stone had an article in the latest issue titled AIG: The Big Takeover. Here's a small excerpt from it.

      The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history -- some $61.7 billion. In the final three months of last year, the company lost more than $27 million every hour. That's $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second. And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste. Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG's 2008 losses).

      It is truly an amazing article and the presents the clearest picture I've seen of how this came about. I suggest everyone read it.

      --
      Si Hoc Legere Scis Nimium Eruditionis Habes
    7. Re:It happens? by AlecC · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But that is based on the assumption that the CMB is, indeed, the relic of the Big Bang, which is one of the assumptions referenced. And that the Hubble shift is, indeed, caused by the expansion of the Universe. Of course, I do not really doubt this, but these are still very indirect deductions. One could imagine a measurement which cast doubt on all of them - e.g. speed of light changing with time, in which case the whole Universe would probably need to be rescaled.

      --
      Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
  2. God's plan... by Faizdog · · Score: 5, Funny

    It wasn't supposed to go nova now, but it was part of God's plan so that our ancestors would know the way here after peeking in the Temple. They could've had more time to look around, but their enemies were right behind them.

    --
    -"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
    1. Re:God's plan... by somersault · · Score: 5, Funny

      Someone needs their Geek Card confiscated.

      So say we all!

      --
      which is totally what she said
  3. Re:200 light years by Dreen · · Score: 5, Informative

    200 million, not 200

  4. LHC? by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 5, Funny

    Apparently, they've fixed their LHC.

  5. Ruh-roh! by Unmanifest · · Score: 5, Funny
    "...exploded as a supernova at a much earlier date than the one predicted by astronomers."

    (eying the sun nervously)...

  6. Many possibilities. by jd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One is that this was a binary system, that a second star was behind the first at the time of the "pre-supernova" photo, and that they collided. Remember, they have very few photographs, are not using any data from space telescopes like SWIFT, and are therefore filling in the blanks.

    We can assume that star evolution is moderately well-understood (though not completely), so if what they think is the input is inconsistent with what they know is the output, the chances are really good that the input is wrong, especially with such little data.

    Another possibility. In order to get a supernova, as TFA notes, you need iron at the core of the star. There is no requirement that the iron be formed by the star, so there is no requirement that the star be at a stage in its evolution to have formed said iron. I don't know how large a rocky planet can get, but it's entirely possible to theorize of a bloody massive exoplanet made largely of iron dive-bombing a star. Depending on how close to critical the star is, it's possible to imagine such a strike giving a supermassive star severe indigestion.

    There again, they may have miscalculated the distance. I believe they rely on spectral analysis to determine the relative velocity of a star and use that to infer distance, as you can't use parallax at those kinds of distances. However, if the star was getting close to critical, the spectral patterns can't necessarily be assumed to follow those of stars in better health. Further, if the star's movement was not primarily due to the expansion of space, the measured Doppler shift won't be directionally proportional to distance.

    These reasons have probably been gone through and either discarded, laughed at, or even maybe put in the "improbable but should be looked at" pile, but it's very reasonable to assume the astronomers themselves have come up with many, many more possibilities, all of which could be valid based on what little is known.

    And that's just it. Very little is known, unless one of the rapid-reaction space telescopes detected the explosion and took a look. TFA makes no mention of such data, but given the volume they process maybe that information hasn't been looked at yet. But I suspect the mystery won't be solvable unless such extra data does exist.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    1. Re:Many possibilities. by AstroWeenie · · Score: 5, Informative

      Sorry, but most of your ideas are far off base.

      One is that this was a binary system, that a second star was behind the first at the time of the "pre-supernova" photo, and that they collided. Remember, they have very few photographs, are not using any data from space telescopes like SWIFT, and are therefore filling in the blanks.

      Not correct -- they used both historical Hubble data to detect the star before it exploded and followup Hubble observations to confirm that the star has now disappeared. And they have data from the Keck Observatory with observations of the supernova. That's about as good as it gets for data.

      We can assume that star evolution is moderately well-understood (though not completely), so if what they think is the input is inconsistent with what they know is the output, the chances are really good that the input is wrong, especially with such little data.

      Star evolution is well understood for the bulk of the lifetimes of stars like the Sun, but there are still many questions about this sort of massive star. Such stars lose most of their mass during their lifetimes through stellar winds, which are themselves very complicated and not that well understood theoretically. And then the stars go through this luminous blue variable stage (which is what this star was before it blew up), and that is very poorly understood and is the subject of a lot of current work.

      So it is in fact much more likely that this has uncovered a part of late stellar evolution of massive, luminous stars that is not correctly described by current models. We don't need any really bizarre explanation like iron planets falling into the middle of the stars. (And that wouldn't work anyway -- the planet would have to have a mass bigger than the Sun to have a big effect.)

  7. original Hubble press release by AstroWeenie · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's the Hubble press release and the paper.

  8. Re:Don't throw out your textbooks yet by Fallen+Seraph · · Score: 5, Informative

    You determine the age of a star based on several factors, but it's primarily based on the ratio of elements within the star. The life of a star is a continual struggle between the force of gravity, pulling the star inward, and the force of the fusion process taking place within the star, pushing it outward. As the fusion process continues, the hydrogen is fused into progressively heavier elements up until the point where it reaches iron. Fusing iron creates no net gain in energy, as the fusion process for iron requires more energy than is generated. By measuring the spectrum of a star, the stellar mass, ratio of elements, and other characteristics can be observed, which, coupled with existing data about stellar life cycles, and stellar classifications, can be used to determine the star's lifespan. Figuring out the lifespan of a star isn't new science, the trick here is that they believe their prior models of stellar evolution and stellar lifecycles may be incorrect. And if you actually read the article, you would understand as much because they say it in plain English toward the end.

  9. My thoughts exactly by mangu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm getting tired these kinds of posts every time something unexpected is observed

    Me too. Those posts show nothing but the envy of people who wished they understood science, but do not have the needed energy and intelligence to study the necessary mathematics.

    Their escape mechanism is to pretend no one really understand science. They think they don't look so stupid if they can pretend everybody is as stupid as they are.

    I think the perfect answer to that kind of thinking was given by Isaac Asimov in an essay named "The Relativity of Wrong". In that article, Asimov shows that the difference between a flat earth and a spherical earth is much bigger than the difference between a spherical earth and the true shape of the earth. Although people who thought the earth was spherical were wrong, they were much *less* wrong than people who thought the earth was flat.

    Science converges asymptotically to the truth. Even if scientists can never be absolutely certain of the truth, they are always getting nearer to absolute truth.

  10. most people who've studied science disagree by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Most scientists don't understand science, outside their tiny provincial field; I'm a scientist so I see this all the time. Most have very fairy-tale notions of the scientific method and knowledge production in particular.

    You might want to read up on some of the people (scientists especially) who have taken the time to understand how science works, and written on the philosophy and sociology of science.

    In particular, it is certainly not true that science converges asymptotically to the truth. It oven diverges substantially, sometimes for hundreds of years, before entire fields (like "racial hygiene") are thrown out as failed experiments. We're currently in the middle of a debate over whether string theory should be placed in that dustbin or not, for example.

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    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10