Physics and Cosmology with Supernovae

超新星的物理学和宇宙学

• 批准号: ST/L000679/1
• 负责人: Mark Sullivan
• 金额: $ 20.32万
• 依托单位: University of Southampton
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2014 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ST%2FL000679%2F1
• 关键词: Physics; Cosmology; Supernovae

The quest to understand what the universe is made of has fired our imagination for thousands of years. Finding the answer has inspired the creativity of generations of scientists, so it may come as a surprise that the nature of over 90% of the Universe is a mystery to us. We know that most of the matter in the Universe is invisible to us, in an unknown form called "dark matter". We also know that the Universe is getting bigger, an expansion driven by a "Big Bang" nearly 14 billion years ago. As the Universe contains objects like stars and planets as well as the unseen dark matter, gravity pulling everything together should slow down this expansion. However, experiments in the last 15 years have come to a quite different conclusion: Our Universe is expanding at an ever faster speed -- the opposite to the effect of gravity.This presents one of the most exciting challenges to modern science: the quest to understand this unexpected acceleration. The unknown substance responsible is called "dark energy"; as the name suggests we know little about it. We think that it makes up about 70% of the Universe with an incredibly low density -- much less than a speck of dust in a volume of space the size of the Earth. Beyond that, there are only theories; perhaps most shockingly, some believe that Einstein's theory of general relativity, the bedrock of modern cosmology, simply doesn't work on the largest scales.This project lays the foundation to test these theories using cosmic explosions known as supernovae, violent thermonuclear explosions from dying stars that can outshine entire galaxies. These supernovae always explode with about the same brightness, and are "standard candles" or cosmic rulers which can measure vast intergalactic distances. I hunt out these supernovae billions of light-years away, and measure their brightness as they appear to us on Earth. When combined with a knowledge of their intrinsic brightness we can infer their distance, and, from that, information about the mysterious dark energy.Recent research has unexpectedly thrown up a extraordinary variety of new types of these supernova explosions. New surveys, charting huge areas of the sky on unprecedented short time-scales, are finding cosmic explosions for which we have no explanation -- from ultra-luminous supernova explosions seen almost to the edge of the universe, to faint blips that barely register on our detectors. Not only is understanding dark energy a challenge, but these new explosion types suggest that the tools that we use for its study may also be poorly understood. This project will investigate the physics of the standard candles that we take for granted.Though this project has limited practical application, there are fewer more fundamental questions about Nature that remain to be answered than the question of dark energy. Understanding the Universe we live in has challenged us ever since early humans became fascinated by the environment around them. Research such as this continues our exploration and understanding of the Universe that surrounds and intrigues us.

对宇宙构成的探索激发了我们数千年的想象力。寻找答案激发了一代又一代科学家的创造力，因此，超过90%的宇宙的性质对我们来说是一个谜，这可能会让人感到惊讶。我们知道宇宙中的大部分物质对我们来说是不可见的，以一种未知的形式被称为“暗物质”。我们还知道，宇宙正在变得越来越大，这是由近140亿年前的“大爆炸”驱动的膨胀。由于宇宙包含恒星和行星等物体以及看不见的暗物质，引力将所有东西拉在一起应该会减缓这种膨胀。然而，过去15年的实验得出了一个完全不同的结论：我们的宇宙正在以前所未有的速度膨胀--与引力的作用相反。这给现代科学带来了最令人兴奋的挑战之一：寻求理解这种意想不到的加速。这种未知的物质被称为“暗能量”;顾名思义，我们对它知之甚少。我们认为它占宇宙的70%，密度低得令人难以置信--比地球大小的空间中的一粒尘埃还要小。除此之外，只有理论;也许最令人震惊的是，有些人认为爱因斯坦的广义相对论，现代宇宙学的基石，根本不适用于最大尺度。这个项目奠定了基础，以测试这些理论使用宇宙爆炸称为超新星，猛烈的热核爆炸从垂死的恒星，可以超越整个星系。这些超新星总是以大约相同的亮度爆炸，并且是“标准蜡烛”或宇宙标尺，可以测量巨大的星系间距离。我在数十亿光年外搜寻这些超新星，并测量它们在地球上出现时的亮度。当结合对它们内在亮度的了解时，我们可以推断出它们的距离，并由此推断出关于神秘暗能量的信息。最近的研究意外地抛出了各种各样的新型超新星爆炸。新的调查，在前所未有的短时间尺度上绘制了巨大的天空区域，正在发现我们无法解释的宇宙爆炸-从几乎到宇宙边缘的超亮超新星爆炸，到我们探测器上几乎没有记录的微弱光点。了解暗能量不仅是一个挑战，而且这些新的爆炸类型表明，我们用于研究的工具也可能知之甚少。这个项目将研究我们认为理所当然的标准蜡烛的物理学。尽管这个项目的实际应用有限，但与暗能量问题相比，关于自然界的更基本的问题还没有得到回答。自从早期人类对周围的环境着迷以来，了解我们所生活的宇宙就一直在挑战我们。像这样的研究继续着我们对围绕着我们的宇宙的探索和理解。

项目成果

Constraining the progenitor companion of the nearby Type Ia SN 2011fe with a nebular spectrum at +981 d

• DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stv1888
• 发表时间: 2015-01
• 期刊: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• 影响因子: 4.8
• 作者: M. Graham;P. Nugent;M. Sullivan;A. Filippenko;S. Cenko;J. Silverman;K. Clubb;W. Zheng

SN 2012ec: mass of the progenitor from PESSTO follow-up of the photospheric phase

• DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stv106
• 发表时间: 2014-10
• 期刊: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• 影响因子: 4.8
• 作者: C. Barbarino;M. Dall’ora;M. Botticella;M. Valle;L. Zampieri;J. Maund;M. L. Pumo;A. Jerkstrand;S. Benetti;N. Elias-Rosa;M. Fraser;A. Gal-yam;M. Hamuy;M. Hamuy;C. Inserra;C. Knapic;A. Lacluyze;M. Molinaro;P. Ochner;A. Pastorello;G. Pignata;D. Reichart;C. Ries;A. Riffeser;B. Schmidt;M. Schmidt;R. Smareglia;S. Smartt;K. Smith;J. Sollerman;M. Sullivan;L. Tomasella;M. Turatto;S. Valenti;O. Yaron;D. Young

SN 2009ip at late times - an interacting transient at +2 years

• DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stv1919
• 发表时间: 2015-02
• 期刊: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• 影响因子: 4.8
• 作者: M. Fraser;R. Kotak;A. Pastorello;A. Jerkstrand;S. Smartt;Ting-Wan Chen;M. Childress;G. Gilmore

OGLE-2013-SN-079: A LONELY SUPERNOVA CONSISTENT WITH A HELIUM SHELL DETONATION

• DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/799/1/l2
• 发表时间: 2014-10
• 期刊: The Astrophysical Journal Letters
• 作者: C. Inserra;S. Sim;L. Wyrzykowski;L. Wyrzykowski;S. Smartt;M. Fraser;M. Nicholl;K. Shen;A. Jerkstrand;A. Gal-yam;D. Howell;D. Howell;K. Maguire;P. Mazzali;S. Valenti;S. Valenti;S. Taubenberger;S. Benitez-Herrera;D. Bersier;N. Blagorodnova;H. Campbell;Ting-Wan Chen;N. Elias-Rosa;W. Hillebrandt;Z. Kostrzewa-Rutkowska;S. Kozłowski;M. Kromer;J. Lyman;J. Polshaw;F. Röpke;A. Ruiter;K. Smith;S. Spiro;M. Sullivan;O. Yaron;D. Young;F. Yuan

Early observations of the nearby Type Ia supernova SN 2015F

• DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stw2678
• 发表时间: 2016-09
• 期刊: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• 影响因子: 4.8
• 作者: R. Cartier;M. Sullivan;R. Firth;G. Pignata;P. Mazzali;P. Mazzali;K. Maguire;M. Childress;I. Arcavi;I. Arcavi;C. Ashall;B. Bassett;B. Bassett;S. Crawford;C. Frohmaier;L. Galbany;A. Gal-yam;G. Hosseinzadeh;G. Hosseinzadeh;D. Howell;D. Howell;C. Inserra;J. Johansson;E. Kasai;C. McCully;C. McCully;S. Prajs;S. Prentice;S. Schulze;S. Schulze;S. Smartt;K. Smith;Mathew Smith;S. Valenti;S. Valenti;D. Young