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Public Affairs coverage from our award-winning staff |
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Blowing Up Stars for Science Sake
Produced by Mike Rhee on Friday, March 23, 2007
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Researchers from the University of Chicago this week conducted the first 3-D simulation of how a white dwarf star explodes. Chicago Public Radio's Mike Rhee reports.
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Exploding dwarf stars make excellent mile-markers for the universe. Professor Don Lam says that's because white dwarf star explosions have a pretty consistent brightness. Lamb is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago. He says by tracking the light from a dwarf star explosion, scientists can tell how fast the universe is expanding.
Lamb says, "The goal we have in doing these simulations is to tell the observers what kinds of properties that the explosion will have so they can try to calibrate what they see." Lamb says his team's simulation could help scientists more accurately interpret the light emitted from a dwarf star explosion. The event itself takes just seconds. But crunching the numbers for the simulation took two supercomputers more than three days.
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