Scientists create a supernova in a lab right here on Earth
3 replies, posted
[quote]
Researchers have used laser beams 60,000 billion times more powerful than a laser pointer to recreate scaled supernova explosions in the laboratory to investigate one of the most energetic events in the universe.
Supernova explosions were triggered when the fuel within a star reignites. The explosion launches shock waves that sweep through a few light years of space.
Professor Gianluca Gregori of Oxford's Department of Physics said, "It may sound surprising that a table-top laboratory experiment that fits inside an average room can be used to study astrophysical objects that are light years across."
Gregori, who led the study, said, "In reality, the laws of Physics are the same everywhere and physical processes can be scaled from one to the other in the same way that waves in a bucket are comparable to waves in the ocean. So our experiments can complement observations of events, such as the Cassiopeia A supernova explosion.
"The experiment demonstrated that as the blast of the explosion passes through the grid, it becomes irregular and turbulent just like the images from Cassiopeia," said Gregori.
The Cassiopeia A supernova explosion was first spotted about 300 years ago in the Cassiopeia constellation 11,000 light years away, its light having taken that long to reach us. The optical images of the explosion show irregular 'knotty' features and associated with these are intense radio and X-ray emissions.
While no one is sure what creates these phenomena, one possibility is that the blast passes through a region of space that is filled with dense clumps or clouds of gas.[/quote]
[url]http://www.businessinsider.in/Researchers-Recreate-Supernova-Explosions-In-Lab/articleshow/36060512.cms[/url]
And a more sciency article:
[url]http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphys2978.html[/url]
I have no idea what the article meant but fuck yeah science!
[QUOTE=shian;44999082]I have no idea what the article meant but fuck yeah science![/QUOTE]Basically scientists were wondering why a particular supernova explosion they witnessed was rather irregular. They predicted that the explosion passed through denser stuff like a gas cloud, causing these distortions, and the experiment they performed lends credence to that hypothesis.
Interesting. At first I thought of the hydrogen bomb, but this seems like a much more advanced foray into the realms of fusion power.
[quote]The optical images of the explosion show irregular 'knotty' features and associated with these are intense radio and X-ray emissions.while no one is sure what creates these phenomena, one possibility is that the blast passes through a region of space that is filled with dense clumps or clouds of gas.[/quote]
strange, these have been known since the early days of nuclear bomb tests, the explanation then was just cooler spots caused by bomb casing fragments, essentially the dense clumps of gas seen here
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