Archives - Astronomy: Page 19
Author: paul carson (Wed Oct 25, 2006 4:21 pm)
Title: The Supernova
By all rights, stars should be stable, sober creatures, preferring to die with a whimper than with a bang. astronomers have struggled to understand why some of them go supernova. these explosions have resisted efforts to describe them in a simplified way, making them perhaps the most complex phenomena in all of astrophysics.
Theorists have gradually ratcheted up the sophistication of their models and have recently succeeded at last in reproducing the two main types of supernovae. The key has been to capture all three spatial dimensions in fine enough detail to track the turbulent flow dynamics.
They have discovered that the explosions can be seriously lopsided, stirring the debris (which includes newly synthesized chemical elements) thoroughly. In the kind of explosion that leaves behind a neutron star, this star recoils and careens across the galaxy at high speed.
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That almost sounds like our own version of a shooting star that we see here on Earth. Except for the fact that our shooting stars are actually meteors falling through the atmosphere. These seem to be genuine shooting neutron stars.