And on rare occasions, supernovae can also create “light echoes,” rings of light that spread out from the site of the original explosion. This process also creates cosmic rays, which consist of protons and atomic nuclei that are accelerated to close to the speed of light. This causes them to shed their outer layers and sends an intense burst of light and high-energy short-wavelength radiation (like X-rays and gamma-rays) out in all directions. When stars reach the end of their life cycle, they experience gravitational collapse at their centers and explode in a fiery burst (a supernova). Continue reading “Hypervelocity Stars Teach us About Black Holes and Supernovae” candidate Fraser Evans showed how data on HVS could be used to probe the mysteries of the most extreme objects in our Universe – supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and the violent supernovae of massive stars. In a recent study from Leiden University in the Netherlands, Ph.D. In previous research, astronomers suggested that these stars could be used to determine the mass of the Milky Way. There are thousands of these stars in our galaxy, and tracking them has become the task of cutting-edge astrometry missions (like the ESA’s Gaia Observatory). This could have drastic implications for our theories of how life could be distributed throughout the cosmos (aka. Occasionally, these stars are fast enough to escape our galaxy and (in some cases) take their planetary systems along for the ride. These speed demons are thought to be the result of galactic or black hole mergers, globular clusters kicking out members, or binary pairs where one star is kicked out when the other goes supernova. Hypervelocity stars (HVS) certainly live up to their name, traveling thousands of kilometers per second or a fraction of the speed of light (relativistic speeds).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |