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New Evidence That Some Supernovae May Be a 'Double Detonation'
New evidence from a 300-year-old supernova remnant in the Large Magellanic Cloud suggests that some Type Ia supernovae may result from a "double detonation" -- where a helium shell ignites first, triggering a second core explosion in a white dwarf before it reaches critical mass. "While the physics ...
"While the physics of the process itself are interesting, the key question this raises is whether type Ia supernovae really are all equally bright," writes Ars Technica's John Timmer. Ars Technica reports:"The detonations in the carbon-oxygen core and the helium-rich shell result in qualitatively different yield products," the researchers behind the new work write in a paper describing it. Imaging using a spectrograph on the Very Large Telescope allowed them to resolve what, in effect, was a spherical sulfur sandwich, with the role of the bread played by calcium.
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