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How big do stellar explosions get?

Nature volume 395, pages 635–636 (1998)Cite this article

We thought we knew how powerful supernova explosions could be. We also thought that supernovae and γ-ray bursts were unrelated. One extraordinary supernova is making us re-examine these ideas.

Supernovae are the explosive death throes of massive stars, and they produce the elements that the Earth and you and I are made of. In a ‘core-collapse’ supernova — one of two main types — the star's core becomes so large that it collapses. The mass of electrons and nuclei becomes compressed into a neutron star, a tiny ball of neutrons about ten kilometres across; that releases a vast amount of gravitational energy into the surrounding material, blowing it outwards. For a few weeks a single star becomes as bright as a galaxy of 100 billion ordinary stars. Supernovae release their energy in many forms: neutrinos, the kinetic energy of the debris, optical light and radio waves.

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Figure 1
Figure 2: Explosive shapes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Oklahoma, Norman, 73019, Oklahoma, USA

    Eddie Baron

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  1. Eddie Baron
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Baron, E. How big do stellar explosions get?. Nature 395, 635–636 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/27067

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