A new study published by University of Chicago researchers challenges the notion that the force of an exploding star prompted the formation of the solar system.
In this study, published online last month in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, authors Haolan Tang and Nicolas Dauphas found the radioactive isotope iron 60 — the telltale sign of an exploding star—low in abundance and well mixed in solar system material. As cosmochemists, they look for remnants of stellar explosions in meteorites to help determine the conditions under which the solar system formed. (more…)
PASADENA, Calif. — A mystery that began nearly 2,000 years ago, when Chinese astronomers witnessed what would turn out to be an exploding star in the sky, has been solved. New infrared observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, reveal how the first supernova ever recorded occurred and how its shattered remains ultimately spread out to great distances.
The findings show that the stellar explosion took place in a hollowed-out cavity, allowing material expelled by the star to travel much faster and farther than it would have otherwise. (more…)
*Brian P. Schmidt, who graduated from the UA in 1989 with a double major in astronomy and physics, shares this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics with two colleagues for a discovery that has rocked our understanding of the cosmos: The universe is expanding at an ever-faster pace.*
In the last years of the 20th century, two teams of researchers set out to race each other to measure the rate of the universe’s expansion, and by extension, unveil how the universe most likely will end.
University of Arizona alumnus Brian P. Schmidt, now a professor of astronomy at Australian National University who headed one of the teams, shares the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics with Saul Perlmutter from the University of California, Berkeley, and Adam G. Riess from Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. (more…)
