Physicists Create Supernova in a Jar

Article

A team of physicists from the University of Toronto and Rutgers University has mimicked a supernova -- an explosion of a star -- in miniature.

"We created a smaller version of this process by triggering a special chemical reaction in a closed container that generates similar plumes and vortex rings," says Stephen Morris, a University of Toronto physics professor.

"It is extremely difficult to observe the inside of a real exploding star light years away so this experiment is an important window into the complex fluid motions that accompany such an event," Morris explains. "The study of such explosions in stars is crucial to understanding the size and evolution of the universe."

The results of this expirement should be pretty interesting. Theres not that much information in the article, and it says the research will be released in a few weeks.

Maybe they will come up with a few new theories on the size or age of the known universe?

reply to post by buni11687


Interesting! I wonder how long till the military trys to weaponise it?

reply to post by TedHodgson


I would think the military would be one of the first to jump on this. I can only imagine how something like this, used in weaponry, could become a "super-weapon". Ultimate doomsday device possibly?

reply to post by buni11687

Definately, but one would hope that they dont try and create anything worse than a NUKE considering they allready seem to abliterate enough with them, i think we should save our energy on weaponising untill we get into space exploration and have a New credible threat that requires worse weapons than we have now.

Great! This is all we need. The power of a supernova in the hands of the creeps that are running this planet.

reply to post by wrathofall


I wouldnt trust half of them on my drum-set

I just had a picture in my mind of one of them dropping the jar...what would happen then? D'oh!

Yeah could be quite jarring.

My friend has one of those things. Switch it on and it sends all sorts of creepy little lightning bolts from the centre to the outer edges. He bought it at the $2 shop.

Funny how they break this news and then say oh we'll tell you more in a couple of weeks.

It's not a -literal- "supernova" - it's a set of reactions and events that, due to a similar observable outcome, are believed to represent the events inside of a star during a supernova.

The actual chemical reaction doesn't have much power. There's no point in trying to militarize it anymore than there is a point in trying to militarize a "tornado in a bottle."