Home > News > Supernovae are Found to be Super-Efficient Particle Accelerators > Comments

Supernovae are Found to be Super-Efficient Particle Accelerators Posted by Guy Pirro on 9/30/2009 7:22 PM Highly energetic particles bombard the Earth's atmosphere continuously. The energy of these particles can be even higher than the energy of particles accelerated by the most powerful accelerator on Earth, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. Scientists believe that cosmic particles can be accelerated by the energy provided in supernova explosions. The supernova creates a shock wave that heats up the surrounding gas. Scientists think that the outward expanding shock wave is responsible for accelerating these particles, which consist mostly of protons moving at relativistic speeds. Researchers at the Astronomical Institute Utrecht in The Netherlands were able to measure how much energy is removed from the shocked gas in these stellar explosions and used to accelerate the particles, solving a long-standing astronomical question of whether or not stellar explosions do indeed produce these accelerated particles. | Read full story |

Comments:

You must be logged in to view the news comments

Click here to log in or Register a new account