Super Luminous Supernovae

Astronomers have announced today that they have found that the explosive transformation of a neutron star into a quark star (ie a Quark-Nova) has the right properties to explain the super-bright supernovae SN2006gy, SN2005gj and SN2005ap. Denis Leahy and Rachid Ouyed from the University of Calgary in Canada to present their findings today at the American Astronomical Society Meeting in St. Louis, Missouri. Their results are of particular interest for two reasons: so far, astronomers do not have a satisfactory explanation for super-bright supernovas, and this provides evidence for the existence of quark stars - a manifestation of a new state of matter.

The objects of study are the three brightest supernova ever observed. SN2006gy was in the galaxy NGC1260 at a distance from Earth of 240 million light-years years; SN2005gj and SN2005ap in more distant galaxies. They were observed at Lick Observatory for SN2006gy (Smith et al, 2008), at Mount Palomar for SN2005gj (Aldering et al 2006), and at McDonald Observatory for SN2005ap (Quimby et al 2008). It produces 100 times more energy than normal supernova light and are a challenge to explain.

We are studying the properties of quark stars, which have been proposed to exist, but has not yet been confirmed. The compact solid objects in the universe are known neutron stars: 16 kilometers and about 1.5 times as massive as our sun. Neutron stars are made of densely packed neutrons together and produced by the collapse of the core of a massive star at the end of his life, including a supernova explosion. Quark stars are even denser, the same Mass, but only 12 kilometers. Quark stars may be produced if the density of a neutron star is high enough. In this case, the neutrons dissolve into quarks, and also much release enough energy to power an explosion similar to the original that the explosion formed the neutron star.

Super-bright supernova may be the result of the second explosion (the Quark-Nova), which converts the neutron star into a quark star. The first explosion, the neutron star would not be noticed, known as the super-bright supernovae have occurred so far away from the Earth. The shock wave from the second explosion takes a few weeks to heat the gas expelled from the first explosion. As a result, the gas is very large (a hundred times the sun-Earth distance) if it is heated and produces a bright long-supernovae.