Related papers: Supernovae astrophysics from Middle Age documents
Pulsar Wind Nebulae are highly intriguing astrophysical objects in many respects. They are the brightest and closest class of relativistic sources, and hence the ultimate laboratory for the physics of relativistic plasmas: several processes…
Observational astronomy has shown significant growth over the last decade and has made important contributions to cosmology. A major paradigm shift in cosmology was brought about by observations of Type Ia supernovae. The notion that the…
The connection between long GRBs and supernovae is now well established. I briefly review the evidence in favor of this connection and summarise where we are observationally. I also use a few events to exemplify what should be done and what…
The recent success of a proposal from some time ago to explain the spectrum of cosmic rays allows some strong conclusions to be made on the physics of supernovae: In the context of this specific proposal to explain the origin of cosmic…
Most supernova explosions accompany the death of a massive star. These explosions give birth to neutron stars and black holes and eject solar masses of heavy elements. However, determining the mechanism of explosion has been a half-century…
Almost since the beginning, massive stars and their resultant supernovae have played a crucial role in the Universe. These objects produce tremendous amounts of energy and new, heavy elements that enrich galaxies, encourage new stars to…
We show that when a supernova explodes, a nearby pulsar signal goes through a very specific change. The observed period first changes smoothly, then is followed by a sudden change in the time derivative. A stable millisecond pulsar can…
In this review we describe recent observational and theoretical developments in our understanding of pulsar winds and pulsar-wind nebulae (PWNe). We put special emphasis on the results from observations of well-characterized PWNe of various…
A complex event observed in the radio pulses from the Crab pulsar in 1997 included echoes, a dispersive delay, and large changes in intensity. It is shown that these phenomena were due to refraction at the edge of a plasma cloud in the…
The discovery of radio pulsars over a half century ago was a seminal moment in astronomy. It demonstrated the existence of neutron stars, gave a powerful observational tool to study them, and has allowed us to probe strong gravity, dense…
The quest for the supernova explosion mechanism has been one of the outstanding challenges in computational astrophysics for several decades. Simulations have now progressed to a stage at which the solution appears close and neutrino and…
Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) are generally believed to be the result of the thermonuclear disruption of Chandrasekhar-mass carbon-oxygen white dwarfs, mainly because such thermonuclear explosions can account for the right amount of nickel,…
The cosmological standard model at present is widely accepted as containing mainly things we do not understand. In particular the appearance of a Cosmological Constant, or dark energy, is puzzling. This was first inferred from the Hubble…
I recall how the discovery of quasars occurred more than forty years ago, and the strong debates marking out their story. It led to the discovery of Massive Black Holes, which are now known to be present in almost all galaxies, and it…
The main observational properties and resulting classification of supernovae (SNe) are briefly reviewed. Then we discuss the progress in modeling of two basic types of SNe - the thermonuclear and core-collapse ones, with special emphasis…
We analyze the Crab pulsar at ten frequencies from 0.43 to 8.8 GHz using data obtained at the Arecibo Observatory. Giant pulses occur only in the main and interpulse components manifest from radio frequencies to gamma-ray energies.…
Population III supernovae have been the focus of growing attention because of their potential to directly probe the properties of the first stars, particularly the most energetic events that can be seen at the edge of the observable…
Fresh insights and powerful numerical tools are revitalizing the theoretical exploration of the supernova mechanism. The realization that the protoneutron star is Rayleigh-Taylor unstable at various times and radii and, hence, that a…
A century ago, nuclear physics entered astrophysics, giving birth to a new field of science referred to as "Nuclear Astrophysics". With time, it developed at an impressive pace into a vastly inter- and multidisciplinary discipline bringing…
Supernovae (SNe), the luminous explosions of stars, were observed since antiquity, with typical peak luminosity not exceeding 1.2x10^{43} erg/s (absolute magnitude >-19.5 mag). It is only in the last dozen years that numerous examples of…