Supernova

Stan Woosley at a young age had a weakness for chemistry, and loved anything to blow up. Texas Teen constantly put pyrotechnic experiments. "From what I just did not mix perchlorate, permanganate, or potassium nitrate – says Woosley. – If, say, mix potassium nitrate with sulfur and charcoal, you get the powder, and if the sugar – a lot of smoke and a beautiful pink flame.
Stan Woosley at a young age had a weakness for chemistry, and loved anything to blow up. Texas Teen constantly put pyrotechnic experiments. ”From what I just did not mix perchlorate, permanganate, or potassium nitrate – says Woosley. - If, say, mix potassium nitrate with sulfur and charcoal, you get the powder, and if the sugar – a lot of smoke and a beautiful pink flame. “Stan conducted its tests on the golf course in Fort Worth: “screw tight lid cans and gave tear”.


Since then half a century has passed, Woosley matured and educated – he now an astronomer at UC Santa Cruz. But he still has to deal with explosions – just a much more powerful. He examines perhaps the most grandiose explosions that knew the universe since its inception. We are talking about supernovae – a devastating loss of stars.
Supernovae in the universe set. They flare up about once every few seconds, usually in some unimaginably remote galaxy. A light of supernova is comparable in brightness with the light of hundreds of billions of stars. At the time of the explosion produced a huge fireball, expanding and cool down for many months. We are lucky – near the sun supernova explosions are rare.

The last such outbreak in our galaxy occurred in 1604, having made an indelible impression on Johannes Kepler, one of the founders of modern astronomy. Her radiance in the night sky was not inferior brilliance of Jupiter. Detonate a supernova at a distance of several light-years away, and all life on Earth would be destroyed by the flow of lethal radiation.
And yet, the traces of these blasts can be found literally everywhere and even in ourselves. This carbon in our cells and iron in the blood and oxygen in the air, the silicon in the rocks, computer chips and man-made mechanisms: all atoms heavier than hydrogen and helium have inside stars and spread through the universe as a result of supernova explosions that occurred billions of years ago. Astronomers, driven by a desire to understand the origin of the world familiar to us – or maybe just irrepressible interest in all explosive – for decades tried to find the answer to the question: why the star shines peacefully for millions of years, suddenly explodes?

Recently, they have managed to make two revolutionary discoveries. One of them concerns the causes of outbreaks of powerful high-energy gamma rays from the points located far away in space. Scientists have for decades struggled with this mystery. And recently, data from space probes, finally confirmed the rightness of Woosley, who a decade ago argued that many of these stars emit flares, ready to become a supernova within a few minutes before the explosion.
Establishment of a connection between these phenomena shed light on another secret – the mechanism of the explosion. The researchers decided to use computer models of supernova, and now some scientists are convinced that the more aware that launches the process leading to disaster. Perhaps a clue – an incredibly powerful reverberation, “swan song” star.


Source: http://scienceray.com/biology/supernova/#ixzz1OCDAYpZf