Simulations Reveal an Unusual Death for Ancient Stars (IMAGE)

DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Simulations Reveal an Unusual Death for Ancient Stars

Caption

This image is a slice through the interior of a supermassive star of 55,500 solar masses along the axis of symmetry. It shows the inner helium core in which nuclear burning is converting helium to oxygen, powering various fluid instabilities (swirling lines). This "snapshot" from a CASTRO simulation shows one moment a day after the onset of the explosion, when the radius of the outer circle would be slightly larger than that of the orbit of the Earth around the sun. Visualizations were done in VisIT.

Credit

Ken Chen, University of California at Santa Cruz

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