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By Hamish Johnston
Recently I blogged about quark novae, which are a passion of the University of Calgary astrophysicist Rachid Ouyed. I caught up with Ouyed at the Canadian Association of Physicists Congress in Edmonton last month, where between sessions he was busy writing a paper about quark novae.
I managed to coax him away from his calculations for long enough to record the above video, in which he talks about quark novae – huge explosions that some astrophysicists believe could occur shortly after some supernovae. Ouyed also talks about the quark stars that may be left behind and how quark novae could affect how astronomers measure cosmological distances.
In a type 1 (a) supernova, the companion is feeding mass to the white dwarf star till it reaches the limit and turns supernova. so the companion has thus been losing mass, meaning it should itself not be reaching a limit where it turns into another supernova or quark nova. And the “spinning down energy” of the companion should appear delayed/ separate enough not to “contaminate” the supernova signal. There might be rare examples of contaminated signals but that isn’t going to disrupt the general pattern and disallow the use of type 1(a)s as standard candles.
Another problem to consider is if the companion is, to us, in the line of sight of the type 1 (a) supernova as that may/should affect the apparent brightness. But again that should be a rare event that does not disrupt the general pattern.
The quark star balanced against the gravity by the degenerate quark plasma pressure is the third type (as a function of the star mass) after the white dwarf balanced by the degenerate electron pressure, and the neutron star balanced by the degenerate neutrons pressure. To have the quark nova, the quark star has to be fed by a star binary to it. It seems that one can create the quark-gluon plasma in the lab. at a tempertature of around 160 MeV.
Dear Sirs
Quark stars are fascinating stars, is it possible that after an evolution perhaps explosive they transform into black holes ?, Is it the gravitational potential of a black hole so great not even light goes further, but if this gravitational potential is so great wouldn’t black holes transform into a cancer of the universe ?, How many black holes are there in the universe?, Do stars transform into black holes in a great amount ?, If so wouldn’t the universe ended, these are question i leave in the air.
M. Lapa
If the quark star’s mass increases, the balancing degenerate quark pressure cannot hold any more against the gravity, and it has to go over to state of the black hole that has the highest possible force in it due to gravity of c^4/4G = 3.0 . 10^43 N, with c, the velocity of light.
In a previous article Hamish said: He also made the tantalizing suggestion that if some of the Type 1a supernovae used to measure distance in the universe are quark novae, then the evidence for the accelerating expansion of the universe is considerably weaker.
Very possibly Rachid Ouyed’s conclusion might be right about type 1a being used as candles for measuring distances.
I think that Rachid Ouyed could have reached an important conclusion concerning type 1
Ithink Rachid Ouyed could be very right about
Sorry my previous comment should have been:
In a previous article Hamish said: He also made the tantalizing suggestion that if some of the Type 1a supernovae used to measure distance in the universe are quark novae, then the evidence for the accelerating expansion of the universe is considerably weaker.
Very possibly Rachid Ouyed’s conclusion might be right about type 1a being used as candles for measuring distances.