The largest supernova ever witnessed on earth occurred this past fall. It was originally spotted on a small 18 inch telescope by Dr. Robert Quimby. Quimby developed software to scan and look for supernovas. One morning, last September, Quimby got up with his coffee and looked at the scan results from the night before. A new dot appeared in the Perseus constellation. He yawned and reported the new supernova to his friends for further research. Little did he know then that it would turn out to be the greatest supernova ever studied on earth.
A supernova is what happens to a star when it dies. It explodes. It sends out its contents into nearby galaxies.
This supernova, called 2006GY, occurred in a spiral galaxy 240 million light-years away. There are several things that make this supernova unique.
One, it is huge. It was 100 times more powerful than a typical supernova. At its peak, it emitted more than 50 billion suns worth of light. Better put on the old shades.
Two, it followed a completely different pattern than the supernovas we are used to seeing. It annihilated itself. Typical supernovas collapse inward and end up as a neutron star or black hole. This one blew itself into oblivion. It began ejecting material ahead of the explosion and then exploded. Typical supernovas burn up all their nuclear fuel and then simply collapse inward.
This supernova behaved the way most astrophysicists believe early supernovas behaved. The first generation stars in our universe were massive like this star (150 times the size of our sun). When they went supernova, good things happened. Namely, heavier elements (i.e. more atomic weight than hydrogen and helium) were spewed into surrounding galaxies. Carbon, which is heavier than hydrogen and helium, is part of that soup that gets blasted into space. God uses carbon to form complex molecules for life. No carbon, no life.
What God gave us in this discovery is a glimpse into how things happened when the universe was just a teenager.
We can truly thank God for supernovas and for timing this particular explosion for our viewing pleasure.
I will be listening to Reasons To Believe today to learn more about this wonderful event.
If the supernova occurred in a galaxy 240 million light years away that means it occurred 240 million years ago. I wonder what's happened since then?
Posted by: Matt | May 10, 2007 at 09:36