February 28, 2004

Final hours of a supernova. Sure, it's a big explosion, but what's cool is astrophysicists have a detailed picture of the final hours and seconds of the blast. In short, the supernova occurs when silicon fusion ends and the star is suddenly left with about 10^27 tons of unburnable iron. The star collapses at up to 15% of the speed of light and rebounds cataclysmically, all in less than one second. More neat stuff here and here. Whoever said class notes are dull?