Fig. 1 top: The supernova remnant Cassiopeia A is about 330 years old. Its asymmetries originate from the earliest phases of the explosion.
Sources: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/STScI; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Steward/Oliver Krause et al. (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy).
Fig. 1 bottom: Formation of asymmetries in a three-dimensional computer simulation.
Source: Nicolay J. Hammer, H.-T. Janka, E. Müller (Max Planck Institut for Astrophysics); Visualisation: Markus Rampp (Rechenzentrum Garching).
Fig. 2: MPA scientist Hans-Thomas Janka will receive ERC Advanced Grant
© 2010 H.-A. Arnolds/MPA
Project by Hans-Thomas Janka from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics accepted for an ERC Advanced Grant
End of July the European Research Council announced that Hans-Thomas
Janka will receive an ERC Advanced Grant for modeling stellar collapse
and explosions. This funding, awarded to independent and exceptional
researchers based only on scientific excellence, will secure the
future of this research group for the next years. With the new
project, the scientists will trace in detail the final stages of heavy
stars with a special emphasis on simulating the entire evolution of a
supernova explosion, starting with the collapse of the stellar core
following its last nuclear burning phases all the way to the final
formation of a supernova remnant.
Stars with more than eight to ten times the mass of our Sun end their
lives in a gigantic explosion, in which the stellar gas is expelled
into the surrounding space with enormous power. Such supernovae belong
to the most energetic and brightest phenomena in the universe and can
outshine a whole galaxy for weeks. They are the cosmic origin of
chemical elements like carbon, oxygen, silicon, and iron, of which the
Earth and our bodies are made of, and which are bred in massive stars
over millions of years or freshly fused in the stellar explosion.
What, however, causes the disruption of the star? How can the
implosion of the stellar core be reversed to an explosion?
Unfortunately (or luckily!) the processes in the centre of exploding
stars cannot be reproduced in the laboratory, and many solar masses of
intransparent stellar gas obscure our view into the deep interior of
supernovae. Research is therefore strongly dependent on most
sophisticated and challenging computer simulations, in which the
complex mathematical equations are solved that describe the motion of
the stellar gas and the physical processes that occur at the extreme
conditions in the collapsing stellar core. For this task the most
powerful existing supercomputers are used, but still it has been
possible to conduct such calculations only with radical and crude
simplifications until recently.
With the new funding for the project "Modeling Stellar Collapse and
Explosion: Evolving Progenitor Stars to Supernova Remnants", the
scientists will now be able to develop detailed computer models to
understand the processes in collapsing stars in all three spatial
dimensions. This ambitious project aims to obtain more reliable
predictions of both the chemical elements that are produced in
supernova explosions and the neutrino and gravitational wave signals
from future galactic supernovae. Moreover, the theoretical models will
help astronomers to interpret observations of the many detailed
properties in nearby, gaseous and compact remnants of past supernova
explosions. In return, this will allow conclusions to be drawn on the
still incompletely understood internal processes that triggered the
explosions of the stars.
The ERC funding will support the project for five years with up to 2.9
million Euros. According to the ERC, the projects to be funded should
aim high, both with regards to the ambition of the envisaged
scientific achievements as well as to the creativity and originality
of proposed approaches. Peer reviewers evaluate all proposals and rank
the projects; only the highest ranked proposals are then offered an
ERC grant.
The supernova project came out on top among more than 2000 proposals and
will thus receive
attractive, long-term funding, which
is only awarded to active researchers who have a track-record of
significant research achievements in the last 10 years.
