Related papers: Supernova Triggers for End-Devonian Extinctions
A number of supernovae, classified as Type II, show remarkably peculiar properties such as an extremely low expansion velocity and an extraordinarily small amount of $^{56}$Ni in the ejecta. We present a joint analysis of the available…
The mechanism of core-collapse supernova explosions must draw on the energy provided by gravitational collapse and transfer the necessary fraction to the kinetic and internal energy of the ejecta. Despite many decades of concerted…
The present understanding of supernova explosion of massive stars as a two-step process, with an initial gravitational collapse toward the center of the star followed by an expansion of matter after a bouncing on the core, meets several…
Stars with masses in the range 7-10Msun end their lives either as massive white dwarfs or weak type II supernovae, and there are only limited observational constraints of either channel. Here we report the detection of two white dwarfs with…
The explosive death of a star as a supernova is one of the most dramatic events in the Universe. Supernovae have an outsized impact on many areas of astrophysics: they are major contributors to the chemical enrichment of the cosmos and…
Various lines of evidence suggest that very massive stars experience extreme mass-loss episodes shortly before they explode as a supernova. Interestingly, several models predict such pre-explosion outbursts. Establishing a causal connection…
Brief (less than 100 years) rapid-increase anomalies in the Earth's atmospheric radiocarbon production have previously been attributed to either gamma photon radiation from supernovae or to cosmic ray particle radiation from exceptionally…
Spectroscopic detection of narrow emission lines traces the presence of circumstellar mass distributions around massive stars exploding as core-collapse supernovae. Transient emission lines disappearing shortly after the supernova explosion…
Core-collapse Supernovae (CCSNe) mark the deaths of stars more massive than about eight times the mass of the sun and are intrinsically the most common kind of catastrophic cosmic explosions. They can teach us about many important physical…
In the classical picture, electron-capture supernovae and the accretion-induced collapse of oxygen-neon white dwarfs (ONeWDs) undergo an oxygen deflagration phase before gravitational collapse produces a neutron star (NS). These types of…
Cosmic radiation backgrounds are a constraint on life, and their distribution will affect the Galactic Habitable Zone. Life on Earth has developed in the context of these backgrounds, and characterizing event rates will elaborate the…
The duration of the neutrino burst from the supernova event SN 1987A is known to be sensitive to exotic sources of cooling, such as axions radiated from the dense and hot hadronic matter thought to constitute the inner core of the…
This thesis assesses the influence of astronomical phenomena on the Earth's biosphere and climate. I examine in particular the relevance of both the path of the Sun through the Galaxy and the evolution of the Earth's orbital parameters in…
We argue that Color Superconductivity (CSC, Cooper pairing in quark matter leading to the breaking of SU(3) color symmetry) may play a role in triggering the explosive endpoint of stellar evolution in massive stars (M > 8 M_{\odot}). We…
Ground-based optical spectra and Hubble Space Telescope images of ten core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) obtained several years to decades after outburst are analyzed with the aim of understanding the general properties of their late-time…
Many theoretical studies have shown that external photoevaporation from massive stars can severely truncate, or destroy altogether, the gaseous protoplanetary discs around young stars. In tandem, several observational studies report a…
In certain mass ranges, massive stars can undergo a violent pulsation triggered by the electron/positron pair instability that ejects matter, but does not totally disrupt the star. After one or more of these pulsations, such stars are…
In a dense star cluster core, a tidal disruption event (TDE) of a white dwarf (WD) can occur if the WD passes within the tidal radius of an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH). Very close encounters cause extreme tidal compression in the…
Supernova remnants are beautiful astronomical objects that are also of high scientific interest, because they provide insights into supernova explosion mechanisms, and because they are the likely sources of Galactic cosmic rays. X-ray…
Over the past five years evidence has mounted that long-duration (> 2 s) gamma-ray bursts (GRBs)--the most brilliant of all astronomical explosions--signal the collapse of massive stars in our Universe. This evidence was originally based on…