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Ammon
3 days ago
- Science
- Ammon
Astronomers get picture of aftermath of a star's double detonation
Ammon News - The explosion of a star, called a supernova, is an immensely violent event. It usually involves a star more than eight times the mass of our sun that exhausts its nuclear fuel and undergoes a core collapse, triggering a single powerful explosion. But a rarer kind of supernova involves a different type of star - a stellar ember called a white dwarf - and a double detonation. Researchers have obtained photographic evidence of this type of supernova for the first time, using the European Southern Observatory's Chile-based Very Large Telescope. The back-to-back explosions obliterated a white dwarf that had a mass roughly equal to the sun and was located about 160,000 light‑years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Dorado in a galaxy near the Milky Way called the Large Magellanic Cloud. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). The image shows the scene of the explosion roughly 300 years after it occurred, with two concentric shells of the element calcium moving outward. This type of explosion, called a Type Ia supernova, would have involved the interaction between a white dwarf and a closely orbiting companion star - either another white dwarf or an unusual star rich in helium - in what is called a binary system. The primary white dwarf through its gravitational pull would begin to siphon helium from its companion. The helium on the white dwarf's surface at some point would become so hot and dense that it would detonate, producing a shockwave that would compress and ignite the star's underlying core and trigger a second detonation. "Nothing remains. The white dwarf is completely disrupted," said Priyam Das, a doctoral student in astrophysics at the University of New South Wales Canberra in Australia, lead author of the study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Astronomy, opens new tab. "The time delay between the two detonations is essentially set by the time it takes the helium detonation to travel from one pole of the star all the way around to the other. It's only about two seconds," said astrophysicist and study co-author Ivo Seitenzahl, a visiting scientist at the Australian National University in Canberra. In the more common type of supernova, a remnant of the massive exploded star is left behind in the form of a dense neutron star or a black hole. The researchers used the Very Large Telescope's Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, or MUSE, instrument to map the distribution of different chemical elements in the supernova aftermath. Calcium is seen in blue in the image - an outer ring caused by the first detonation and an inner ring by the second. These two calcium shells represent "the perfect smoking-gun evidence of the double-detonation mechanism," Das said. "We can call this forensic astronomy - my made-up term - since we are studying the dead remains of stars to understand what caused the death," Das said. Stars with up to eight times the mass of our sun appear destined to become a white dwarf. They eventually burn up all the hydrogen they use as fuel. Gravity then causes them to collapse and blow off their outer layers in a "red giant" stage, eventually leaving behind a compact core - the white dwarf. The vast majority of these do not explode as supernovas. While scientists knew of the existence of Type Ia supernovas, there had been no clear visual evidence of such a double detonation until now. Type Ia supernovas are important in terms of celestial chemistry in that they forge heavier elements such as calcium, sulfur and iron. "This is essential for understanding galactic chemical evolution including the building blocks of planets and life," Das said. A shell of sulfur also was seen in the new observations of the supernova aftermath. Iron is a crucial part of Earth's planetary composition and, of course, a component of human red blood cells. In addition to its scientific importance, the image offers aesthetic value. "It's beautiful," Seitenzahl said. "We are seeing the birth process of elements in the death of a star. The Big Bang only made hydrogen and helium and lithium. Here we see how calcium, sulfur or iron are made and dispersed back into the host galaxy, a cosmic cycle of matter." Reuters
GMA Network
3 days ago
- Science
- GMA Network
Astronomers get picture of aftermath of a star's double detonation
The supernova remnant SNR 0509-67.5 view from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, the expanding remains of a star that exploded hundreds of years ago in a double-detonation – the first photographic evidence that stars can die with two blasts, as seen in this undated handout picture obtained by Reuters on July 2, 2025. WASHINGTON —The explosion of a star, called a supernova, is an immensely violent event. It usually involves a star more than eight times the mass of our sun that exhausts its nuclear fuel and undergoes a core collapse, triggering a single powerful explosion. But a rarer kind of supernova involves a different type of star - a stellar ember called a white dwarf - and a double detonation. Researchers have obtained photographic evidence of this type of supernova for the first time, using the European Southern Observatory's Chile-based Very Large Telescope. The back-to-back explosions obliterated a white dwarf that had a mass roughly equal to the sun and was located about 160,000 light?years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Dorado in a galaxy near the Milky Way called the Large Magellanic Cloud. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). The image shows the scene of the explosion roughly 300 years after it occurred, with two concentric shells of the element calcium moving outward. This type of explosion, called a Type Ia supernova, would have involved the interaction between a white dwarf and a closely orbiting companion star - either another white dwarf or an unusual star rich in helium - in what is called a binary system. The primary white dwarf through its gravitational pull would begin to siphon helium from its companion. The helium on the white dwarf's surface at some point would become so hot and dense that it would detonate, producing a shockwave that would compress and ignite the star's underlying core and trigger a second detonation. "Nothing remains. The white dwarf is completely disrupted," said Priyam Das, a doctoral student in astrophysics at the University of New South Wales Canberra in Australia, lead author of the study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Astronomy. "The time delay between the two detonations is essentially set by the time it takes the helium detonation to travel from one pole of the star all the way around to the other. It's only about two seconds," said astrophysicist and study co-author Ivo Seitenzahl, a visiting scientist at the Australian National University in Canberra. In the more common type of supernova, a remnant of the massive exploded star is left behind in the form of a dense neutron star or a black hole. The researchers used the Very Large Telescope's Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, or MUSE, instrument to map the distribution of different chemical elements in the supernova aftermath. Calcium is seen in blue in the image - an outer ring caused by the first detonation and an inner ring by the second. These two calcium shells represent "the perfect smoking-gun evidence of the double-detonation mechanism," Das said. "We can call this forensic astronomy - my made-up term - since we are studying the dead remains of stars to understand what caused the death," Das said. Stars with up to eight times the mass of our sun appear destined to become a white dwarf. They eventually burn up all the hydrogen they use as fuel. Gravity then causes them to collapse and blow off their outer layers in a "red giant" stage, eventually leaving behind a compact core - the white dwarf. The vast majority of these do not explode as supernovas. While scientists knew of the existence of Type Ia supernovas, there had been no clear visual evidence of such a double detonation until now. Type Ia supernovas are important in terms of celestial chemistry in that they forge heavier elements such as calcium, sulfur and iron. "This is essential for understanding galactic chemical evolution including the building blocks of planets and life," Das said. A shell of sulfur also was seen in the new observations of the supernova aftermath. Iron is a crucial part of Earth's planetary composition and, of course, a component of human red blood cells. In addition to its scientific importance, the image offers aesthetic value. "It's beautiful," Seitenzahl said. "We are seeing the birth process of elements in the death of a star. The Big Bang only made hydrogen and helium and lithium. Here we see how calcium, sulfur or iron are made and dispersed back into the host galaxy, a cosmic cycle of matter."—Reuters
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists share groundbreaking image of the 'cosmic web' connecting 2 galaxies near the dawn of time
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. On a large scale, the universe is like a complex spider web, full of cosmic filaments of gas, dust and dark matter, separated by large voids. Now, in a remarkable new image, researchers captured one of these cosmic filaments connecting two galaxies from when the universe was just 2 billion years old. It's the most detailed image of an ancient strand of the cosmic web ever taken. Cosmic filaments stretch across millions of light-years and form what's known as the "cosmic web." Galaxies are strung together to form large filaments, and at their intersections are galaxy clusters — the densest regions of the web. These filaments funnel gas into galaxies, thereby helping them grow. They also funnel galaxies into galaxy clusters, thus creating the largest structures in the universe. The cosmic web's structure isn't random. It's shaped by dark matter, the mysterious entity that accounts for 85% of all the matter in the universe. Dark matter is heavy and doesn't interact with light, so it's tough to detect. But it does interact with normal, visible matter gravitationally; it pulls on it in ways we can see. Because of this, dark matter dominates normal matter. It holds everything together and gives it structure. It also shapes the cosmic web's filaments. The flow of gas within the filaments can provide insight into how galaxies form and evolve. However, it's difficult to observe the gas within these filaments because even the most abundant element, hydrogen, emits very faint light. Related: 5 space discoveries that scientists are struggling to explain To capture the new image, astronomers from the University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy and the Max Planck Institute (MPA) in Germany utilized 150 hours of observations from the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile to capture a highly detailed portrait of a cosmic filament stretching about 3 million light-years across and connecting two galaxies with supermassive black holes. From these observations, the researchers traced the boundary between the gas in the galaxies and the material in the cosmic web through direct measurements for the first time, lead author Davide Tornotti, a doctoral student at the University of Milano-Bicocca, said in a statement. The remarkable sensitivity of MUSE allowed the team to capture the filament's light after it had traveled for almost 12 billion years to reach Earth, the team explained in a study published Jan. 29, 2025, in the journal Nature Astronomy. RELATED STORIES —Astronomers discover 'Quipu', the single largest structure in the known universe —Euclid telescope spots rare 'Einstein ring' hiding near Earth — and an ancient, unnamed galaxy behind it —Astronomers catch black holes 'cooking' their own meals in bizarre, endless feeding cycle Based on the current cosmological model, the team simulated the expected filamentary structure within the cosmic web. "When comparing to the novel high-definition image of the cosmic web, we find substantial agreement between current theory and observations," Tornotti said. This adds support to the standard model of cosmology, which some researchers have started to question thanks to puzzling James Webb Space Telescope observations of the very early universe. The crisp image and its strong alignment with predictions open up new opportunities to study gas distribution in cosmic filaments and its impact on the formation of galaxies. Study co-author and MPA staff scientist Fabrizio Arrigoni Battaia added that the team plans to discover more filaments in future observations to get a complete view of how gas flows within the cosmic web.
