WHEN STARS GO SUPERNOVA

+ THE TITANIC ERUPTIONS THAT GIVE RISE TO LIFE  + OUR STELLAR NEIGHBOURS DUE TO EXPLODE "NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THIS EXPLOSION IS"  Astrophysicist Christopher Frohmaier

- Colin Stuart

Place your fingers on your wrist and check your pulse. You can feel the blood pumping around your body, delivering oxygen from your head to your toes. That oxygen is ferried around by trillions of red blood cells, each just 0.008 millimetres across. The element iron plays an indispensable role in this oxygen delivery, but the universe would contain very little iron if it weren’t for a ferocious type of exploding dying star called a supernova. Without supernovae, you simply wouldn’t exist.

We often think of the Sun as the quintessential star, but it’s not massive enough to go supernova when it dies. According to Dr Christopher Frohmaier, a supernova researcher at the University of Southampton, to detonate in this most spectacular of celestial firework displays, a star needs a starting mass equivalent to at least eight Suns. The path that these massive stars follow towards their eventual demise as a supernova is inevitable. It’s triggered by a fundamental shift in the interplay between the outward pressure generated by the nuclear fusion reactions in the star’s core and gravity. “Throughout a massive star’s life, it’s in a constant balance between these forces,” says Frohmaier.