Boffins duplicate conditions of supernovas in lab

Florida State University physicists have begun conducting experiments in a groundbreaking new research facility RESOLUT (REsonator SOLenoid with Upscale Transmission) that could throw more light on cosmic phenomena like the formation of matter, or the death of stars.

Washington, Aug 16 : Florida State University physicists have begun conducting experiments in a groundbreaking new research facility RESOLUT (REsonator SOLenoid with Upscale Transmission) that could throw more light on cosmic phenomena like the formation of matter, or the death of stars.

Over the past few months, a team of researchers have started using the RESOLUT facility to create very rare, extremely short-lived radioactive particles similar to those that form inside exploding stars.

The analytical data generated in the experiments is then used to hypothesize the behaviour of matter and the physical properties governing the universe.

"We're doing experiments that replicate, in a very controlled manner, the explosions that take place in stars. This helps us understand the nuclear processes that occur in stars, the origin of elements, and how stars explode," said Ingo Wiedenhover, an associate professor of physics at FSU and leader of the RESOLUT team.

Weighing some 16 tons and taking up more than 450 square feet of space along a wall inside the university's accelerator lab, RESOLUT enables researchers to fire a beam of atomic particles through a steel tube at speeds approaching 60 million miles per hour - roughly one-tenth the speed of light - and then observe the nuclear reactions that occur.

"When the beam strikes a target, the collision produces very exotic nuclei that contain properties similar to those occurring in stars and star explosions. But perhaps RESOLUT's greatest value as a scientific instrument is its function as a mass spectrometer - a device that allows us to identify and study the short-lived particles created during these miniature explosions," said Prof. Wiedenhover.

He, however, said that getting to this point has been an arduous process that began in 2002.

"After five years of proposals, fundraising, designing, building and carefully testing RESOLUT, we are very excited that it has now come online for experiments," said Samuel L. Tabor, a professor of physics at FSU, who directs the John D. Fox Superconducting Accelerator Laboratory.

"To my knowledge, only one other university in the entire United States has a facility similar to RESOLUT, so our students have a pretty unique opportunity to receive hands-on experience that they can get almost nowhere else," he said.

Presently Prof. Wiedenhover is overseeing several experiments using RESOLUT that create, for a fraction of a second, a specific type of radioactive nuclei that are found only in a type of exploding star known as a Type Ia supernova.

"Type Ia supernovas result when a certain type of star known as a white dwarf reaches a critical mass and burns through its nuclear fuel so quickly that it suddenly explodes," said Prof. Wiedenhover.

"What makes these explosions so useful for astrophysicists is that they always release the same amount of energy, so their peak brightness is virtually the same in all instances. This uniform level of brightness makes Type Ia supernovas useful as a 'standard candle' - a gauge for measuring distances across the universe," he said.

Prof. Tabor said such standard candles have also helped scientists to determine in recent years that the universe is expanding, not shrinking - and that the expansion is taking place at an ever-increasing rate.

"Observations of Type Ia supernovas have greatly increased science's understanding of the workings of the universe. Now, with RESOLUT, we hope to learn even more about these gigantic nuclear explosions - all from the safety of a lab in a basement on the FSU campus," he said.

ANI