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A billion light years away, a monster star tore itself to shreds.
And by that I mean it tore itself to shreds. In general exploding stars — supernovae — leave behind a neutron star or black hole, but in this case it’s possible that the explosions was so over-the-top ridiculously violent that even the star’s core was ripped apart. It’s difficult to exaggerate how violent an event this was… but then, when huge amounts of antimatter are involved, that’s what happens.
Yes, seriously.
The event is called SN2016iet, a supernova that was detected on November 14, 2016. It was first spotted in data taken by the space-based Gaia observatory, and was followed-up by the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey, then Pan-STARRS, and eventually the huge Gemini Telescope to get deep spectra of it. But it didn’t take long to determine that this particular supernova was weird.
And then they found it was really weird.
But even then it didn’t behave properly. Instead of fading away into obscurity, the supernova continued to shine, fading much more slowly than usual. The astronomers were still able to observe it in spring of this year, more than two years after the initial explosion.
[...] So in the end, nothing with this supernova fits. No one model seems to explain everything it’s doing, which means it truly is one of a kind. Nothing like it has ever been seen before, and we can’t fully explain its behavior.
I wonder though, just how long this will remain a unique event. We now observe thousands of supernovae every year. Even if this event is extremely rare, we’re likely to find another one eventually. Maybe not exactly like it, but close enough that we can compare them, see how they differ. That will help astronomers understand how these catastrophic events occur in the first place. Although these kinds of supernovae are at the tippy-top of the scale, they provide checks on our understanding of the physics of exploding stars under extraordinarily extreme conditions.
And, as I mentioned before the very first stars in the Universe may have exploded like SN2016iet, so observing it is like a window in to the very distant past, 12 billion or more years ago, when the very first generation of stars existed. For that reason alone, I hope we find lots more just like it.
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Monday August 19 2019, @01:31AM (4 children)
And yet, physicists assume they understand supernovae at the percent-level and ascribe deviations from their expectation to dark energy. Idiocy comes in many forms.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @06:23AM (2 children)
> physicists assume they understand supernovae at the percent-level
You mean, physicists have hundreds of samples with values within 1% of prediction bounds, and try to figure out what other math / new physics / other explanations might describe rare data which doesn't fit?
> Idiocy comes in many forms.
What are you trying to say here? Physicists are idiots for not knowing, or for trying to figure out consistent math systems to describe phenomena, or...?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @01:11PM (1 child)
This would indeed be idiotic, since the meaning of the 1% bound is that 1% of the data shouldn't fit if your theory is correct. There is no need for some other explanation for rare observations that don't fit. This is a dog chasing its tail.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @04:32PM
There is error in the measurement, which is what you address in your comment.
There is also error in the models, because they are imperfect approximations.
If the observations are better explained by error in the model than by error in the measurement* then they should look for better models.
Since these are professional smart people™, I'm going to assume that they've done those calculations and found a high probability the error is in their model and not the measurement.
If you think they haven't, then write a paper pointing that out, because it would be a significant contribution to physics that they would /welcome/. How happy physicists would be to discover you've saved them wasting their time.
If you can't write that paper, then you're in no position to make that claim.
*and this is a quantitative calculation, not a judgment call, though judgment calls may be required in making that calculation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19 2019, @09:06PM
Not even knowing enough about what you're criticizing to word the insult properly?
Hmmm, I'm gonna go with "this guy is a (s)table genius." The (s) is for super.