Hypernova Confirmed: Most Violent Object in the Universe
source: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/11/hypernovas-the-most-violent-object-in-the-unive...
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- EmperorThan
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While there is, on average, only one supernova per galaxy per century, there is something on the order of 100 billion galaxies in the observable Universe. Taking 10 billion years for the age of the Universe (it's actually 13.7 billion, but stars didn't form for the first few hundred million), Dr. Richard Mushotzky of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, derived a figure of 1 billion supernovae per year, or 30 supernovae per second in the observable Universe!
Certain rare stars -real killers -type 11 stars, are core-collapse hypernova that generate deadly gamma ray bursts (GRBs). These long burst objects release 1000 times the non-neutrino energy release of an ordinary "core-collapse" supernova. Concrete proof of the core-collapse GRB model came in 2003.
It was made possible in part to a fortuitously "nearby" burst whose location was distributed to astronomers by the Gamma-ray Burst Coordinates Network (GCN). On March 29, 2003, a burst went off close enough that the follow-up observations were decisive in solving the gamma-ray burst mystery. The optical spectrum of the afterglow was nearly identical to that of supernova SN1998bw. In addition, observations from x-ray satellites showed the same characteristic signature of "shocked" and "heated" oxygen that's also present in supernovae. Thus, astronomers were able to determine the "afterglow" light of a relatively close gamma-ray burst (located "just" 2 billion light years away) resembled a supernova.
It isn't known if every hypernova is associated with a GRB. However, astronomers estimate only about one out of 100,000 supernovae produce a hypernova. This works out to about one gamma-ray burst per day, which is in fact what is observed.
What is almost certain is that the core of the star involved in a given hypernova is massive enough to collapse into a black hole (rather than a neutron star). So every GRB detected is also the "birth cry" of a new black hole.
Who ever said science is boring!
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/11/hypernovas-the-most-violent-object-...
http://www.williamsclass.com/EighthScienceWork/ImagesEighth/SuperNovaReminant.jp...
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royulery
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when god has gas.
- 2 years ago
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royulery
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FishaHouse777
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Wow, unless we make force fields soon we are all screwed. Beam me up scotty!
- 2 years ago
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FishaHouse777
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asherp
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I remember seeing a special on super-massive blackholes, saying that there is a binary blackhole system that when it finally collapses, will hyper-nova, and the bottom end in pointed in our general direction, which means a cone of gamma energy is headed our way some day soon.
- 2 years ago
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asherp
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EmperorThan
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asherp:
Yeah I know what you're talking about, think it was on The Universe second season.
What's cool is they've found that a Supernova already exploded near Earth 450 million years ago and it killed most of the life on Earth.
Article I posted a couple months back about it:
http://current.com/items/90935189_nasa-supernova-likely-caused-of-second-largest...
- 2 years ago
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EmperorThan
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EmperorThan
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asherp:
Nother deal about the subject from wikipedia.
- 2 years ago
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EmperorThan
