Powerful Supernova May Be Related To Death Spasms of First Stars

necro81 writes "The New York Times is reporting on a discovery from a team of UC Berkley researchers, who may have discovered the brightest stellar explosion ever observed. Observations of the cataclysmic explosion of a 100- to 200-solar-mass star began last September, based on data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The researchers believe that the explosion is similar to the death spasms of the first stars in the universe. The super-massive star's collapse is believed to have been so energetic as to create unstable electron-positron pairs that tore the star apart before it could collapse into a black hole — seeding the universe with heavier elements."

Re:we should we believe the astrophysicists now?

[Vendetta]

So you're saying it's a bad thing to revise theories based on new information or observations? There is a reason they are called "theories".

Re:we should we believe the astrophysicists now?

[PFI_Optix]

It's the revisions that make it science.

Some scientists--and physicists can be especially guilty of this in my experience--place too much faith in their own knowledge and accept the current findings of science as absulute fact. They forget that science is fluid, always changing as new information enters the equation and each answer spawns new questions. Call it arrogance if you want; I think it's something less than that.

In any case, what's the alternative? "God did it"? That may very well be true, but it doesn't answer the question of "how did it happen?"...which is what science seeks to explain.

Re:Oddity

[Nos.]

I think this is getting a bit pedantic. Sure, the light takes 7500 years to get here, thus it could have gone supernova quite some time ago, and the astronomers know this. It doesn't mean we have to speak about everything having occurred in the past... its all relative.

Re:we should we believe the astrophysicists now?

[Ambitwistor]

Why shouldn't we believe "the astrophysicists"? Did they lie to you? Gore your ox? Steal your candy? Pee in your breakfast cereal?

After 70 years of computer simulations and observations they failed to predict this new kind of supernova.

Yeah, so? There are infinitely many things that are true which scientists have yet to predict. Why are you under the impression that scientists are supposed to know everything? Even if they did know all the physics involved, you can still only make finitely many predictions in finite time.

Its interesting to read speculations about degenerate lepton gases, but arent they just hand-waving again?

"Again"? When were they "hand-waving" before? About what?

Just goes to show you the arrogance of physicists- they claim answers and grandiose Standard Theories, but are frequently revising them because they mis things like accelerating expansion and 150SM supernova.

That's a feature, not a bug. It's how science works! Physicists claim answers because they have answers. That doesn't mean they have ALL the answers, or they're always right. This is no different in astrophysics than in any other field of physics, or any other science, or in any other field of study, period. People know some things, they can predict some things, and sometimes they miss something or get something wrong. That doesn't mean that nobody knows anything or that experts have nothing useful to say.

(By the way, accelerating expansion was in Einstein's theory from the start, but he took it out because there wasn't any evidence for it at the time.)

I seriously don't understand your point of view, unless (as is likely) it's just flamebait. Every time something new is discovered, do you seriously run around disparaging whole fields of science just because the new thing wasn't predicted ahead of time? Or do you just have some bug up your nose about astrophysicists? It's not like they were even wrong about normal supernovae, they just didn't predict this new kind.

Re:we should we believe the astrophysicists now?

[DrJay]

Actually, my understanding was that astronomers are suggesting that this may be the first observed case of a type of supernova called pair-instability. The actual prediction of pair-instability supernovae was made decades ago - it's more that observations are catching up with predictions.

So, you seem to have gotten this exactly backwards.

As a bit of reading should also make clear, the reason that observations of this type of supernova are rare is that the conditions that favored the formation of stars capable of exploding this way have become rare as the universe has aged. They are expected to be far more common in the early universe, and it's hoped that the next generation of space telescope will be capable of viewing them (as it will see further, and thus earlier, into the universe).

Re:Oddity

[JesseL]

Your post is based on the flawed premise that there exists some kind of objective time.

Re:we should we believe the astrophysicists now?

[Hoi Polloi]

How is trying to explain something based on the best current evidence arrogance? Are you saying people shouldn't ever believe anything or they should just ignore new info? Sorry but science is a continual learning process and unlike religion is constantly adjusting to new information and better explanations.

Re:Oddity

[profplump]

That's only true if you assume that two distant points share the same timescale -- a relativist might argue that "now, far away" is the same moment in time as "here, long ago", at least baring the discovery of macro-scale faster-than-light causation. That is to say, while an observer near the supernova might have seen the explosion long ago, his "long ago" and your "now" may be the same moment, not just two different perspectives of the same event that happened long ago with respect to all observers.

Beside that, even if there is a universal timescale unrelated to the speed of light, from our perspective it is happening "now", and since we don't often communicate with anyone more than a few thousand miles away it's silly to express things in any other timescale.

Re:we should we believe the astrophysicists now?

[stewardwildcat]

As an astrophysicist I feel I should comment. First of all, 70 years of computer simulations later.... we are just beginning to be able to model a supernova with high enough resolution that we can "kind of" fit the observations without contrived scaling factors. This is also only being done in two dimensions and for the first few microseconds of a supernova. Models that hardly include all the physics involved are too much for the modern computational machine. Everytime we run a new model that includes more physics, they fit the data better and better. It is this way we discover what physics matters in the actual explosion. Since we cannot COMPLETELY model anything in real life on a computer all simulations are hand-wavy. Second, developing theories is very important. You use all of the available data and create a theory that can be tested and describes the current state of what you are studying. The real test of a theory is if it stands up to scrutiny. IF the "standard model" was so vague that no meaningful tests could be performed to prove the theory incorrect then it is a bad theory. Scientists prove things wrong, that is out job. We find situations where the current models do not describe the observations. That is scientific progress. We adjust our theories and learn about new physics. If gravity wasnt tested we would still be using Newtonian Gravity rather than General Relativity, which is still being worked on today (Gravity Probe B). Lastly, Astronomers have never observed a 150-200 Msolar supernova before. This is the first time we are able to look at what might have happened when the first stars formed. If we had seen a whole lot of these and had a perfect unified model then we wouldnt have to do science or discover things anymore. This is an exciting time as we have the most advanced instruments built by humans peering into the early universe discivering where we came from. I am always excited about new results, whether they be proven wrong or not, because we are always one step closer to understanding the world in which we live.

Re:E.L.E

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but the really interesting question is how this event would appear to us poor doomed souls. Would be just all be instantly dead? Would we all suddenly feel really sick, and then keel over moments later? Would the lucky few on the facing side of the planet go to a better place instantly, while everyone else rotated into the line of fire over the next 12 hours? If it "came from below" would the northerners survive (or visa versa)?