Runaway anti-matter production makes for a spectacular stellar explosion
Monday, January 4, 2010 - 15:56
in Astronomy & Space
(PhysOrg.com) -- University of Notre Dame astronomer Peter Garnavich and a team of collaborators have discovered a distant star that exploded when its center became so hot that matter and anti-matter particle pairs were created. The star, dubbed Y-155, began its life around 200 times the mass of our Sun but probably became "pair-unstable" and triggered a runaway thermonuclear reaction that made it visible nearly halfway across the universe.