Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 30, 2025

Investigation of Early Plasma Evolution Induced by Ultrashort Laser Pulses
Published on: July 2, 2012
A type Ia supernova at the heart of superluminous transient SN 2006gy
Anders Jerkstrand1,2, Keiichi Maeda3,4, Koji S Kawabata5
1Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Karl-Schwarzschild-Straße 1, 85748 Garching, Germany. anders.jerkstrand@astro.su.se.
Abstract:
Superluminous supernovae radiate up to 100 times more energy than normal supernovae. The origin of this energy and the nature of the stellar progenitors of these transients are poorly understood. We identify neutral iron lines in the spectrum of one such supernova, SN 2006gy, and show that they require a large mass of iron (≳0.3 solar masses) expanding at 1500 kilometers per second. By modeling a standard type Ia supernova hitting a shell of circumstellar material, we produce a light curve and late-time iron-dominated spectrum that match the observations of SN 2006gy. In such a scenario, common envelope evolution of a progenitor binary system can synchronize envelope ejection and supernova explosion and may explain these bright transients.
Related Concept Videos
Detection of Black Holes
Their closest cousins are neutron stars, which are composed almost entirely of neutrons packed against each other, making them extremely dense. A neutron star has the same mass as the Sun but its diameter is only a few kilometers. Therefore, the escape velocity from their surface is close to the speed of light.
Not until the 1960s, when the first neutron...
Schwarzschild Radius and Event Horizon
The minimum speed required to launch a projectile from the surface of an object to which it is gravitationally bound so that it eventually escapes the object’s gravitational field is called the escape velocity. The escape velocity is independent of the mass of the object. Merging the idea of escape...
Thomson's e/m Experiment
A particle with charge q, speed v, and mass m enters an area from the top, where the magnetic and electric fields are perpendicular both to the particle's motion and to one another. The magnetic...
Atomic Emission Spectroscopy: Overview
Insensitive Nuclei Enhanced by Polarization Transfer (INEPT)
Nuclear Fusion
A helium nucleus has a mass that is 0.7% less than that of four hydrogen nuclei; this lost mass is converted into energy during the fusion. This reaction produces about...

