RRJ#4, From the Clash of White Dwarfs, the Birth of a supernova

¤ Reference

Overbye, D. (2010, February 22). From the Clash of White Dwarfs, the Birth of a Supernova. The New York Times (Space&Cosmos). Retrieved on February 24, 2010. From http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/science/space/23star.html?ref=space

¤ Summary

Astronomers have been searching for a star which exploded a special way for the last 20 years. When the number of white dwarfs grows up, they set off a thermonuclear cataclysm that is bright enough to show across the universe and that makes uniform from one supernova to the next supernova. A decade ago, astronomers found that dark energy was quickly expanding in the universe. But astronomers did not agree about how the white dwarfs gain their weight and explode. Marat Gilfanov and Akos Bogdan, of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, said that supernovas are mostly produced by crash. They showed the source of important exploding, but they stil don’t know exactly. Mario Livio, a theorist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, said “The main results so far will remain unchanged.” The new results and the idea would not influence the measurements of dark energy. But “if we find a connection to where nature does it one way versus the other, we could use that information. And we are getting close to that point now,” Adam Riess, Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute and a first-rate dark energy hunter, said.

¤ Reaction

The universe has a lot of stars which sometime explode and crash. People don’t know how many stars are in the universe; people don’t even know where the end of the universe is. When a white dwarf explodes, it makes a lot of energy. So this light can shine across the universe. The universe has unlimited potentiality to find our need. Marat Gilfanov and Akos Bogdan said they didn’t know exactly what they were. That is interesting to me, because I believe they have studied this for a long time and they might be experts in studying the universe. But they don’t know exactly what is going on. I’m also interested in a planet’s moving; it sometimes has a cycle and sometimes not, because a planet’s size is various; some planets are small but some planets are really big. They are moving, whatever their size and whatever their speed fast or slow. So, I’m curious about what the source of a planet’s moving is and about how the star is born or dies. Astronomers don’t yet know exactly about a star’s explosion in cosmology. But Adam Riess has a positive prospect in discovering explosion of a star.