Related papers: Superluminous supernovae: an explosive decade
Gamma-ray bursts are transient events from beyond the solar system. Besides the allure of their mysterious origin, bursts are physically fascinating because they undoubtedly require exotic physics. Optical transients coincident with burst…
Every supernova hitherto observed has been considered to be the terminal explosion of a star. Moreover, all supernovae with absorption lines in their spectra show those lines decreasing in velocity over time, as the ejecta expand and thin,…
Supernovae are important probes of the properties of stars at high redshifts because they can be detected at early epochs and their masses can be inferred from their light curves. Finding the first cosmic explosions in the universe will…
The paper presents the nowdays definition of the phenomenon of cosmic gamma ray bursts, refers to the main alternative models of their origin and proposes three promising domains of new observations in the incoming decade.
The discovery of dark energy by the first generation of high-redshift supernova surveys has generated enormous interest beyond cosmology and has dramatic implications for fundamental physics. Distance measurements using supernova explosions…
The number in the title is a birthday-inspired overestimate by about an order of magnitude. Nevertheless, this contribution reminds of well-known reasons that prevented straightforward explosions in many numerical supernova models. It…
We present the discovery of a plausible super-luminous supernova (SLSN), found in the archival data of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Stripe 82, called PSN 000123+000504. The supernova peaked at M_g<-21.3 mag in the second half of…
The origin of Galactic cosmic-ray ions has remained an enigma for almost a century. Although it has generally been thought that they are accelerated in the shock waves associated with powerful supernova explosions-for which there have been…
These lecture notes intend to form a short pedagogical introduction to the use of typical type Ia-Supernovae (hereafter SNIa) as standard candles to determine the energy density of the universe. Problems of principle for taking SNIa as…
Recent observations have extended the range of diversity among spectra of Type Ia supernovae. I briefly discuss SN Ia explosion models in the spectroscopic context, the observed diversity, and some recent results from direct analysis with…
The twentieth century has thrown up exotic concepts -- dark matter, gravity waves, Higgs Bosons, Magnetic Monopoles and so on. The sad truth is that even after several decades, these remain elusive to observation and experiment. Some are…
Two recently discovered very luminous supernovae (SNe) present stimulating cases to explore the extents of the available theoretical models. SN 2011kl represents the first detection of a supernova explosion associated with an ultra-long…
Massive stars (M> 10Msun) end their lives with spectacular explosions due to gravitational collapse. The collapse turns the stars into compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes with the ejection of cosmic rays and heavy…
An explanation for superluminal phenomena based on wave-particle duality of photons is suggested. A single photon may be regarded as a wave packet, whose spatial extension is its coherence volume. As a photon propagates as a wave train in…
The observational and theoretical state of Galactic and extragalactic bubbles are reviewed. Observations of superbubbles are discussed, with some emphasis on nearby bubbles such as the Local Bubble (LB) and the Loop I superbubble (LI).…
We perform one-dimensional radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of energetic supernova ejecta colliding with a massive circumstellar medium (CSM) aiming at explaining SN 2016aps, likely the brightest supernova observed to date. SN 2016aps was…
How do massive stars explode? Progress toward the answer is driven by increases in compute power. Petascale supercomputers are enabling detailed three-dimensional simulations of core-collapse supernovae. These are elucidating the role of…
Only a few red dwarf flaring stars in the solar neighbourhood have undergone exceptional events called superflares. They have been detected with high-energy satellites (i.e. Swift) and have been proven to be powerful events (both in…
It is estimated that a star brighter than visual magnitude 17 is undergoing a detectable gravitational microlensing event, somewhere on the sky, at any given time. It is assumed that both lenses and sources are normal stars drawn from a…
Study of radio supernovae over the past 25 years includes two dozen detected objects and more than 100 upper limits. From this work it is possible to identify classes of radio properties, demonstrate conformance to and deviations from…