The national media has spotlighted the work of a University professor and graduate student who have discovered the origin of supernovas.
But despite all the buzz about the discovery — which astronomy professor Bradley Schaefer said answers “one of the top nine questions in modern astronomy” — Schaefer and graduate student Ashley Pagnotta are still joking around.
“Brad is used to all of this attention, but it is weird for me,” Pagnotta said as she laughed with her colleague.
The discovery has attracted national and international coverage from news outlets like MSNBC, the Los Angeles Times and Space Daily, among others.
Supernovas are stellar explosions from white dwarf stars, which are small stars composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. The impetus behind supernovas is a 400-year-old mystery.
Schaefer and Pagnotta unraveled that mystery by examining two possible explanations of how supernovas are created — double degenerate white dwarfs, or the explosion of two white dwarfs, and single degenerate white dwarfs, the explosion of a white dwarf and a single companion star.
The key to solving the mystery is a characteristic of the single degenerate white dwarf — after the white dwarf explodes, the regular stars stay behind.
By using the Hubble Space Telescope, located about 350 miles above Earth, Pagnotta said she and Schaefer looked into the large Magellanic cloud, a nearby galaxy and satellite of the Milky Way, for remnants of these supernovas. She said in order to distinguish between the two types of degenerates, they calculated the center of the remnant and observed.
After looking at the type 1-A supernovas, they were finally able to identify the system that created them and put the old mystery to rest.
“No stars near the center of the remnant were found through telescopic observations,” Pagnotta said.
From this observation, Schaefer and Pagnotta concluded that the double degenerate white dwarfs were the cause of these supernova explosions.
“This was the first time anyone had been able to successfully identify the cause,” Pagnotta said.
As the duo chatted in Pagnotta’s office Monday, Pagnotta continued to joke with Schaefer about the mass amounts of media attention they have both received for their work. She said it’s nice to bring positive attention to the Astronomy Department and academics at the University.
“People in the science and astronomy community enjoy what they do,” Pagnotta said. “It is neat when other people are equally as interested.”
All jokes aside, the two astronomers appreciate the attention they have received. Schaefer said this supernova discovery will be a universal subject.
“Not just science students, but even economics students should understand this ideology,” Schaefer said. “This discovery relates to all people.”
This discovery is Schaefer’s second milestone in astronomy this semester, after his research team, headed by Saul Perlmutter, won the Nobel Prize when the group discovered the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.
Down the road, this new information about supernovas will be able to determine dark energy, the age of the universe and other unsolved questions, Schaefer said. He said he believes many cultures and people have asked similar philosophical questions about life that may now be answered.
“By knowing where the supernovas come from, we can now make a finer cosmology tool for all to use,” Schaefer said with a sense of accomplishment.
 
 
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Contact Lauren Duhon at [email protected]