by Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe
https://phys.org/news/2021-12-capture-f ... wborn.html
A team of astronomers has discovered the fastest optical flash of a Type Ia supernova, and reports a study in Astrophysical Journal Letters published on December 8.
Many stars end their lives through a spectacular explosion. Most massive stars will explode as a supernova. Though a white dwarf star is the remnant of an intermediate mass star like our sun, it can explode if the star is part of a close binary star system, where two stars orbit around each other. This type of supernovae is classified as Type Ia supernovae.
Because of the uniform and extremely high brightness of the Type Ia supernova, which is about 5 billion times brighter than our sun, they are widely used by researchers as a standard candle for distance measurements in astronomy. As the most successful example Type Ia supernovae helped researchers discover the accelerating expansion of our universe. But despite the great success of the Type Ia supernova cosmology, researchers are still puzzled by basic questions such as what the progenitor systems of Type Ia supernovae are, and how Type Ia supernova explosions are ignited.