Researchers have recreated the process of creating shock waves by using tiny balls of foam and laser beams.
By Leah Crane.
The Hubble Space Telescope photographed the remnant of a supernova.
The Hubble Heritage is a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency.
Simulations of clouds of gas in space with foam balls and laser beams are helping us figure out how supernovae stimulates star formation. Our understanding of the formation of our own solar system could be deepened by these small-scale experiments.
Astrophysicists think that clouds of gas, dust and space can become stellar nurseries when they interact with shock waves from supernovae. The dense areas that can collapse into stars are created by the shock waves. It is difficult to study in detail from afar, and the process has complex effects that are hard to model in computers.
One solution is to build models of the systems in a laboratory that behave the same and can be observed. A sphere of carbon-hydrogen foam was used by Bruno and his colleagues to represent the cloud.
They placed the sphere in a chamber with a small carbon pin, then fired a high-energy laser at the pin, rapidly heating it until it exploded. The explosion sent a shock wave through the foam, similar to the shock wave that a supernova could send.
After the shock wave passed, the researchers analysed the foam ball to see if it had any dense spots. These spots represent the dense areas of a cloud that could collapse in on themselves to form stars.
When they set off two explosions instead of one, they saw 30 per cent more compression. The process may be more important in parts of the universe where there are lots of stars of the same age. It will take more detailed observations to see how important compression is in the universe.
The journal reference is Matter and Radiation at Extremes.
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