Page 1 of 1

[astro-ph/0611902] Spectropolarimetric diagnostics of thermo

Posted: December 01 2006
by Tommy Anderberg
From ESO's press release:
"Our study reveals that explosions of Type Ia supernovae are really three-dimensional phenomena," he adds. "The outer regions of the blast cloud is asymmetric, with different materials found in 'clumps', while the inner regions are smooth."

The research team first spotted this asymmetry in 2003, as part of the same observational campaign (ESO PR 23/03 and ESO PR Photo 26/05). The new, more extensive results show that the degree of polarisation and, hence, the asphericity, correlates with the intrinsic brightness of the explosion. The brighter the supernova, the smoother, or less clumpy, it is.

"This has some impact on the use of Type Ia supernovae as standard candles," says Ferdinando Patat. "This kind of supernovae is used to measure the rate of acceleration of the expansion of the Universe, assuming these objects behave in a uniform way. But asymmetries can introduce dispersions in the quantities observed."

"Our discovery puts strong constraints on any successful models of thermonuclear supernova explosions," adds Wang.
I expect Middleditch (astro-ph/0608386) and Vishwakarma (astro-ph/0511628) will be all over this one. What I would like to know is: how much impact is "some impact"?