Tag: cosmic

Solitary Supernova in Vast Intergalactic Space

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A supernova is the only event in existence that happens on both astronomical and human scales (If you think of others – tell me).  It involves a massive stellar explosion and release of energy that can match the output of an entire galaxy, yet this release happens in the blink of a cosmic eye, about two weeks.  For all that could live in the incredibly vast amounts of empty space between galaxies, a supernova is a great indicator that stars do in fact inhabit this space.  Recently, the Hubble Space Telescope confirmed that two such supernovae have been discovered. In...

Dark Energy not as Energetic as Once Thought

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After yesterday’s post about some data that has caused us to rethink a theory, I wanted to follow it up today with an even bigger bit of data that could substantially change an even bigger theory.  Dark energy was discovered as a large-scale repulsive force in the universe that is responsible for the acceleration of its expansion.  It was discovered by looking at type 1a supernovae in distant galaxies.  since the supernovae all explode with the same mass limit, they appear to all have the same intrinsic luminosity.  If we know how bright they actually are, we can compare them...