A supernova that lights twice as bright as normal, could be the result of a collision between two stars.
Together with a group of international scientists have Danish astronomers found a supernova, that glows much brighter and for a longer time than all other supernovae, which has so far been observed.
It writes the University of Copenhagen, in a press release, call the supernova “the queen of all the supernovae”.
When a star that has at least eight times more mass than our Sun, dies, it happens in a violent explosion, called a supernova. It happens about once every 100 years in our galaxy, the Milky way.
Now scientists from Copenhagen University then found a supernova that lights up brighter than all the others so far observed.
– We have never experienced a supernova that lights up so strongly. In addition shone throughout the 600 days, where a “normal” supernova light is between 10 and 100 days, before it burns out completely, says Alejandro Vigna-Goméz, who is a postdoc at the Dark Cosmology Centre at the Niels Bohr Institute.
He has, together with researchers from, among others, Harvard, Northwestern-, Ohio – and Stockholm University just released a study of the surprising results in the journal Nature Astronomy.
in addition to the supernova with the name “SN2016aps”, light is twice as bright as “normal” supernovae, it has a eksplosionskraft, there are five times as intense as a regular stjernedød.
A luminous and vigorously exploding star has space scientists have never experienced before, and the big question is, how it can be done.
– The energy that comes from the explosion, shows that the star has had a lot of 50-100 times that of the Sun. But if it had it, then there is too much hydrogen, which explodes, tells Alejandro Vigna-Goméz.
– Usually burns the gas out quickly when a star begins to explode and “die”, but for this particular supernova was the level high right to the last. This suggests that there were two stars with high content of gas, there had been one, he explains.
Although the researchers do not yet know with 100% certainty that it is the coalescence of the two stars, which is the reason for the special supernova, they are now a step closer to confirm what had only been theory.
– Furthermore, is it crazy to think that the limitations we thought that supernovae had, now no longer applies. It here study confirms that there is still much to discover about our marvelous universe, says Alejandro Vigna-Goméz.
/ritzau/
