British astrophysicists are beginning an experiment in which they will try to use ultra-high-power lasers to create conditions similar to those that prevail inside exploding stars, according to the press service of the University of Oxford.
“Modern lasers have reached such a high power that we can now recreate some of the things that happen during a supernova explosion, reducing it to such a size that it could be handled. This allows us to start looking for answers to many fundamental questions of the life of the Universe, for example, how did its magnetic fields arise,”says one of the experiment participants Jena Meinecke.
The life of most large stars that have exhausted their reserves of hydrogen and helium ends in a supernova explosion. In fact, this is the most powerful thermonuclear explosions resulting from a sharp compression of the interior of a dying star, their heating to ultra-high temperatures and the fusion of nuclei of elements heavier than iron. Remains of small stars, the so-called white dwarfs, can also turn into supernovae, "stealing" matter from nearby large stars or merging with each other.
Supernovae, according to scientists today, are the main "factories of matter" in the Universe - they produce the lion's share of all heavy elements and spread them across galaxies, contributing to the formation of planets and new stars. In addition, supernovae are considered the main source of antimatter in the Milky Way and one of the potential reasons why many galaxies “die” and stop producing new stars.
Meinecke and her colleagues, led by professor of physics at the University of Oxford Gianluca Gregory, are now working to recreate some of the processes that occur in the super-hot center of a supernova, compressing and heating samples of matter using a super-powerful ORION laser capable of generating pulses of power in petawatts.
By observing how laser flares vaporize matter and heat it up to tens of millions of degrees Kelvin, scientists hope to understand how supernova remnants expand, what particles it generates, and how the surrounding space reacts to its explosion.
These observations and videos of "pocket supernovae", scientists hope, will allow us to understand how much supernovae affect the evolution of galaxies and how they look at different stages of development. This will help not only reveal the secrets of their birth, but also find out how much they influenced the birth of the Earth and other potentially inhabited planets.