New Light On Star Death

Astronomers at Queen University discovered a new form of light produced in the Universe. This light, was believed to be from a Supernovae, but this light was hundreds of times brighter than the one coming from a Supernovae. This light is believed to be emanating from the core of a star instead of being emanating from the outer shell.

Matt Nicholl, the head of this research said, "Supernovae are several billions of times brighter than the Sun, and in fact are so bright that amateur astronomers regularly search for new ones in nearby galaxies. It has been known for decades that the heat and light from these supernovae come from powerful blast-waves and radioactive material.
But recently some very unusual supernovae have been found, which are too bright to be explained in this way. They are hundreds of times brighter than those found over the last fifty years and the origin of their extreme properties is quite mysterious.
Some theoretical physicists predicted these types of explosions came from the biggest stars in the universe destroying themselves in a manner quite like a giant thermonuclear bomb. But our data doesn't match up with this theory.
In a supernova explosion, the star's outer layers are violently ejected, while its core collapses to form an extremely dense neutron star -- weighing as much as the Sun but only tens of kilometers across. We think that, in a small number of cases, the neutron star has a very strong magnetic field, and spins incredibly quickly -- about 300 times a second. As it slows down, it could transmit the spin energy into the supernova, via magnetism, making it much brighter than normal. The data we have seems to match that prediction almost exactly."

This news is important to our daily life because we don't know how is this supernovae is going to affect the universe and as a consequence affect the world. Due to the light and the heat this supernovae emits the world and the universe can be seriously affected.

MLA:Queen's University, Belfast. "New light on star death: Super-luminous supernovae may be powered by magnetars." ScienceDaily, 16 Oct. 2013. Web. 20 Oct. 2013

LINK TO THE ARTICLE: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131016132155.htm