Sunday, July 3, 2011

Astronomers search for a new class of major explosions

 They are a little lighter blue and strange. They are a new type of explosion sublime breaking by a team of astronomers led by the California Institute of technology (Caltech). Among the most hsito of the universe, one of these new types can help researchers better understand the formation of stars and distant galaxies, from the early universe which may be like.
"We're learning to a whole new class of one which was not previously known," says Robert Quimby, a doctorate of Caltech and lead the paper to be published on 9 June in the journal nature. In addition to four explosions of this kind, the team also discovered two of his identity was known, was reached also belonged, the astronomers of this new class.
Quimby made first titles when 2007-graduate student at the University of Texas, Austin, he discovered what was then the brightest Supernova discovered: 100 billion times brighter than sunlight, 10 times lighter than most of the others. This was dubbed 2005ap, also a bit strange. On the one hand, its chemical fingerprint spectrum that means astronomers SN consists of of how far it is, what happened when he up-all I saw was in contrast to the past. He also showed no signs of hydrogen, which is usually the most.
At about the same time, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope discovered a mysterious name SCP 06F6 supernova. This was a supernova, but also a rainbow there was nothing that indicated that the blast was similar to the cosmic 2005ap.
Shri Kulkarni, Caltech's John d. and Catherine t. MacArthur Professor of planetary astronomy and Science took the paper recruited Quimby to be a founding member of the Palomar transient factory (PTF). PTF is a project that scans the sky of flashes of light which did not exist before-flashes that the signal objects as phenomena, many of them are one. As part of PTF, Quimby and his use of the Samuel Oschin telescope 1.2-meter at the Palomar Observatory for four new one. After taking the spectra with 10-meter Keck Telescopes in Hawaii, 5.1-meter telescope at the Palomar Telescope Herschel, William 4.2-meter Bahá ' í Canary Islands, all four objects, astronomers discovered was unusual spectral signature.
Quimby then realized that if he moved a bit of a spectrum of SN 2005ap-find some years earlier-it looks a lot like those four new objects. The team then plotted together all spectra. "Crack pairing it was perfect," he recalls.
Astronomers soon determined that SCP 06F6 propulsion spectrum similarly aligned it with the others. Eventually, it became clear that each of the six are brothers, and they all spectra blue with very light wavelengths shines ultraviolet.
According to one mysterious-Quimby Monday, SCP 06F6-2005ap was looks different from one another because 2005ap was 3 billion light years away, while SCP 06F6 was 8 billion light years away. One far more powerful than the cosmological redshift, a phenomenon in which the universe expands stretches the wavelength of the light emitted, which moves one towards the end of the spectra.
Four new discoveries, which had features similar to SCP 06F6 2005ap and, were about an event, providing the missing link connected to two previously explained. "What was most striking about this-it was all one unified Department," says Mansi Kasliwal, a graduate student at Caltech and took on the nature paper.
Although astronomers now know that these are related, no one knows much more than that. "We have a whole new class of objects that is not explained by models we've seen before," says Quimby. What we know about them is that they are bright and hot to 10,000; 20,000 degrees Kelvin are expanding quickly in 10,000 km/s; They are hydrogen; And they take 50 days to fade away a lot more than most of the one, which is often driven by radioactive. Therefore, there must be other mechanism is to make them bright.
One possible model that would create an explosion with these properties is a poem about 90-130 times the solar mass. Blow up pulsations off shells without hydrogen fuel, when the star will explode like a supernova, whose blast brought to life to these shells temperatures observed and luminosities.
More model requires a star explodes as the supernova but leaves behind the so-called magnetar spinning dense object quickly with a strong magnetic field. A rotating magnetic field slows down the magnetar because it interacts with the particles charged that fills space, releasing energy. The energy heats the material which was explosion blew past it during the supernova naturally can explain the brightness of these events.
One discovered live more dull, less a few stars known dwarf galaxies. (The milky way there are 200-400 billion stars). One, they are almost a hundred times lighter than their host galaxies, highlight their environments such as street lamps light the dark roads far away. They work like a type of backlight, astronomers measure the spectrum of interstellar gas that fills one which dwarf galaxies, and reveal the composition of each Galaxy. After Supernova observed fading in a few months later, astronomers can directly study the dwarf galaxy-which would have added remain supernova.
One of these can also reveal what stars might be like the old who, since they probably come from the stars around a hundred times more massive Sun-stars which was very similar to the first star of the universe.
"This is really amazing how rich the night sky continues to be," says selects. "In addition to one, the company makes great progress Palomar transient astronomy major."
This research is supported by the Israel Science Foundation, National Science Foundation of the United States-Israel, Israeli Science Foundation, Department of energy, the Betty Gordon Moore, Gary &, Cynthia Bengier, Richard Rhoda Goldman Foundation, and the Royal Society.
The source of the story:
The above story printed  materials provided by California Institute of, a EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS. The original article was written by Marcus Woo.
View the original article here

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