Related papers: Supernova Triggers for End-Devonian Extinctions
Supernova explosions are among the most energetic phenomena in the known universe. There are suggestions that cosmic rays up to EeV energies might be accelerated in the young supernova shell on time scales of a few weeks to years, which…
Single-year spikes in radiocarbon production are caused by intense bursts of radiation from space. Supernovae emit both high-energy particle and electromagnetic radiation, but it is the latter that is most likely to strike the atmosphere…
The observation of neutrinos from Supernova 1987A has confirmed the theoretical conjecture that these particles play a crucial role during the collapse of the core of a massive star. Only one per cent of the energy they carry away from the…
The supernova explosion increases cosmic ray and x-ray fluxes in the surrounding interstellar medium. Cosmic ray particles and x-ray radiation penetrate nearby molecular clouds and affect the chemical and thermal evolution of the gas. Here…
Distant supernovae have been observed to be fainter than what is expected in a matter dominated universe. The most likely explanation is that the universe is dominated by an energy component with negative pressure -- dark energy. However,…
Massive stars, by which we mean those stars exploding as core collapse supernovae, play a pivotal role in the evolution of the Universe. Therefore, the understanding of their evolution and explosion is fundamental in many branches of…
Under the hypothesis that some fraction of massive stellar core collapses give rise to unusually energetic events, termed hypernovae, I examine the required rates assuming some fraction of such events yield gamma ray bursts. I then discuss…
The ultimate fate of the universe, infinite expansion or a big crunch, can be determined by measuring the redshifts, apparent brightnesses, and intrinsic luminosities of very distant supernovae. Recent developments have provided tools that…
The density structure surrounding the iron core of a massive star when it dies is known to have a major effect on whether or not the star explodes. Here we repeat previous surveys of presupernova evolution with some important corrections to…
Core-collapse supernovae are among Nature's most energetic events. They mark the end of massive star evolution and pollute the interstellar medium with the life-enabling ashes of thermonuclear burning. Despite their importance for the…
Despite tremendous interest in the topic and decades of research, the origins of the major losses of biodiversity in the history of life on Earth remain elusive. A variety of possible causes for these mass-extinction events have been…
It has been suggested that galactic shock asymmetry induced by our galaxy's infall toward the Virgo Cluster may be a source of periodicity in cosmic ray exposure as the solar system oscillates perpendicular to the galactic plane. Here we…
Core-collapse supernovae are among the most energetic explosions in the universe marking the catastrophic end of massive stars. In spite of rigorous studies for several decades, we still don't understand the explosion mechanism completely.…
The explosion of a supernovae (SN) represents the sudden injection of about 10^51 ergs of thermal and mechanical energy in a small region of space, causing the formation of powerful shock waves that propagate through the interstellar medium…
We estimate the frequency of intermittent hypermutation events and disruptions of planetary/satellite photochemistry due to ultraviolet radiation from core collapse supernova explosions. Calculations are presented for planetary systems in…
We start with a new version of Newtonian cosmology by incorporating the fact that the galaxies are losing mass due to emission of radiation. This yields accelerated recession for the galaxies. We point out that in the presence of…
The explosion of core-collapse supernova depends on a sequence of events taking place in less than a second in a region of a few hundred kilometers at the center of a supergiant star, after the stellar core approaches the Chandrasekhar mass…
Some fraction of the material ejected in a core collapse supernova explosion may remain bound to the compact remnant, and eventually turn around and fall back. We show that the late time (> days) power associated with the accretion of this…
There is increasing evidence that low mass stars with circumstellar disks can be born close to massive stars, in some cases within tenths of a pc. If the disks have lifetimes greater than those of the more massive stars, they are exposed to…
The transit of primordial black holes through a white dwarf causes localized heating around the trajectory of the black hole through dynamical friction. For sufficiently massive black holes, this heat can initiate runaway thermonuclear…