Posted on 06/06/2005 12:18:35 PM PDT by ladtx
A search for the remains of a nearby stellar explosion has come up empty. Astronomers observed the blast site of the supernova, SN 1987A, with the Hubble Space Telescope, but could not find any sign of the dense stellar core.
"We think a neutron star was formed. The question is: Why don't we see it?" astronomer Genevieve Graves of UC Santa Cruz said today.
A neutron star is an extremely dense ball of subatomic particles, which theory says can form as the core of a massive star collapses after exploding. This is what is believed to have happened in 1987, when a star with 20 times the mass of our Sun blew up, 165,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
"Therein lies the mystery -- where is that missing neutron star?" said Robert Kirshner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
Neutron stars are often detected as pulsars when they emit intense beams of radio waves, like a lighthouse. It may be too soon to see radio flashes from the remnant of SN 1987A, since theory predicts that pulsars take between 100 to 100,000 years to develop after a supernova.
A young neutron star could, however, be seen if it is swallowing up nearby gas and debris from the explosion. This accreted material would heat up and emit light. But when the team of astronomers scoured the area of SN 1987A, they found no signature of this accretion.
"A neutron star could just be sitting there inside SN 1987A, not accreting matter and not emitting enough light for us to see," said Peter Challis from the CfA.
Future observations may uncover this quiet remnant by studying the infrared emission from dust clouds in the vicinity, which may be reprocessing the weak ultraviolet and visible light coming from the neutron star.
A supernova from a more massive star can form a black hole, instead of a neutron star. The progenitor of SN 1987A is right near the dividing line, so it may have created a black hole. Still, a black hole would be indirectly detectable by the same accretion mechanism that was not seen in these latest results.
Heads up!!
UPS must have lost it!........
I bet it's right next to my car keys.
I didn't think it would be missed. I'll put it back.
By any chace, did that runaway bride have one on her when she showed up?
I bet my dog buried it in the backyard. There's a lot of odd stuff that she's snitched buried out there...
LQ
Doh!
chace = chance
Doh! (CitiGroup employee here...)
This is a clear call for owner registration of all supernova cores.
Trance Gemini, avatar of the sun, and her people reshaped the neutron star into an invisible doughnut.
This reminds me..I'm outta beer...gotta call the wife to bring more Cores.
Thank you. Now I have someone to bitch to........
It's in Sandy Berger's shirt.
The most entertaining professor at Harvard. If there were any justice, he'd assume the "Carl Sagan" pop-astronomer post. An oft-remarked comment was: "If it weren't for all the, um, math and science involved, I'd love to be an astrophysicist."
Vent all you want!
I've got a few complaints myself...
If the core was that dense maybe it collapsed on itself and became a black hole.
LOL!!
Wouldn't that be 165,020 years ago?
Approximately. Give or take a light year or two.
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