Search for Exploding Stars Leads to Unusual Finding

Search for Exploding Stars Leads to Unusual Finding

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WASHINGTON -- Astronomers meeting in Washington last week announced that a recent search for bright exploding stars -- commonly called supernovas -- found something quite unusual: antimatter.

Usually stars like our sun are powered by fusion reactions in which the nuclei of two atoms fuse together to form a heavier nucleus. In Y-155, a star in the constellation Cetus, the astronomers argue that another process was crucial: the making and unmaking of antimatter particles.

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In all stars a titanic struggle takes place between gravity, which wants to draw matter toward the center of the star, and the pressure of nuclear interactions, which tends to keep the star inflated as if it were a balloon. Only when the star uses up all its internal fuel, causing the nuclear reactions to slow down, does gravity start to win out. The resulting gravitational collapse is what causes the star to explode. When a star dies in this way, as a supernova, it often spews matter into space and can be brighter than its host galaxy, at least for a short time. Astronomers love to study such supernovas since they say a lot about the inner mechanisms of stars and also provide a yardstick for determining how far away the star was.

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Originally posted by starshiner

Search for Exploding Stars Leads to Unusual Finding

www.foxnews.com

WASHINGTON -- Astronomers meeting in Washington last week announced that a recent search for bright exploding stars -- commonly called supernovas -- found something quite unusual: antimatter.

Usually stars like our sun are powered by fusion reactions in which the nuclei of two atoms fuse together to form a heavier nucleus. In Y-155, a star in the constellation Cetus, the astronomers argue that another process was crucial: the making and unmaking of antimatter particles.

(visit the link for the full news article)

or something else is happening here.

Something we continue to understand, the more we look at it, using more and more versatile modes of observation.

Just keep in mind what Robert Anton Wilson said about scientific observation, to paraphrase; you inevitably end up finding out more about the way your "tool" of observation operates, than you do about the "thing" you're trying to observe.

It's a fine line. Don't trip.