New findings on the explosion rate of massive stars: is the Universe burning out?

Jun 02, 2009

A research team has just published the most precise measurement ever of the rate of gravitational collapse supernovae observed in the Universe 3.7 billion years ago

One of the areas of the sky observed by SNLS through the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope Megacam camera. The area shown represents 2% of the total area covered and encompasses some 20,000 galaxies

The Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS) team at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope facility has just obtained the world's best measurement of the explosion rate of massive stars when the Universe was only 10 billion years old. A research team at IRFU's particle physics department at the CEA-Saclay centre worked on the first three years of SNLS data to obtain this result, which makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of the origins and evolution of chemical elements in the interstellar medium. The measurement seems to show that there are two to four times fewer supernovae today than 3.7 billion years ago. Could the Universe be burning out?

Contacts:

Nathalie PALANQUE-DELABROUILLE

James RICH

Vanina RUHLMAN-KLEIDER

#2654 - Last update : 03/17 2010

Particle Physics Division

Institute of Research into the Fundamental Laws of the Universe

Contacts: