Brightest supernova a multi-star pile-up?

[docm]

Link....<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p><b>Multi-star pile-up caused brightest supernova</b><br /><br />A mystery over what caused the brightest supernova ever observed finally appears to have been solved. Two astronomers in the Netherlands say the explosion was the result of a cosmic pile-up: dozens of massive stars crashing into each other, producing a monstrous heavyweight star that eventually exploded, leaving a giant black hole in its wake.<br /><br />Supernova 2006gy burst into view in September 2006 in a distant galaxy, 240 million light years away. The blast was 100 times more powerful than a normal supernova, suggesting the exploding star weighed in at more than a hundred times the mass of the Sun.<br /><br />But astronomers found a puzzling detail in their observations: the supernova debris contained large amounts of hydrogen, which they would not have expected for such a massive star: It should have shed its outer hydrogen layers at an earlier stage.<br /><br />Although several possible explanations have been put forward to explain the massive blast – including the formation of a quark star and the production of huge quantities of antimatter – no single theory could easily explain all of the observations.<br /><br /><b>Multi-star pile-up</b><br /><br />Now, in the journal Nature, Simon Portegies Zwart and Edward van den Heuvel of the University of Amsterdam say 2006gy may have been the result of a multiple-star collision in a dense stellar cluster.<br /><br />They say dozens of stars – some of them hydrogen-rich – collided to form a giant weighing in at over 100 Suns. Unable to support its own weight, the colossus blew itself to smithereens in an explosion that outshone its home galaxy.<br /><br />Computer simulations reveal that multiple collisions are quite likely in very dense star clusters. Our own gal</p></blockquote> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[themage]

Good stuff, I will be very eager to see the test results a few years from now in order to determine if it was a multi-star pile up or something else.

 

[ashish27]

Wow! This can be the theme of my Star Trek fanfiction, a starfleet vessel in a cluster with colliding stars. I can't wait to see the graphics!