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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
An international team of researchers has found evidence a supernova explosion that was first triggered by a helium detonation, reports a new study in Nature this week.
A Type Ia supernova is a type of white dwarf star explosion that occurs in a binary star system where two stars are circling one another. Because these supernovae shine 5 billion times brighter than the Sun they are used in astronomy as a reference point when calculating distances of objects in space. However, no one has been able to find solid evidence of what triggers these explosions. Moreover, these explosions only occur once every 100 years in any given galaxy, making them difficult to spot.
"Studying Type Ia supernovae is important because they are a valuable tool researchers use to measure the expansion of the universe. A more precise understanding of their history and behavior will help all researchers obtain more accurate results," said author and University of Tokyo School of science Professor Mamoru Doi.
-- submitted from IRC
Ji-an Jiang, et. al. A hybrid type Ia supernova with an early flash triggered by helium-shell detonation. Nature, 2017; 550 (7674): 80 DOI: 10.1038/nature23908
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday October 09 2017, @08:36AM (1 child)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.01824 [arxiv.org]
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Tuesday October 10 2017, @01:40PM
Thank you. What I can understand of the paper seems to indicate that my analogy of nuclear bomb primaries and secondaries was not an unreasonable one. From page 6: "In principle, a He-shell detonation not only generates a shock wave propagating toward the center of the white dwarf (WD) and ignites carbon burning near the center..." Thermonuclear bomb fission primaries produce shock waves that are supposed to compress and heat the secondary enough to ignite fusion, and in a similar way, a shell of helium undergoing fusion around a white dwarf can produce shock waves that would ignite carbon fusion in the centre.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.