Type Ia supernovae are among the best tools to measure cosmological distances. Thanks to their consistent peak brightness, these ”standard candles” are used to map the expansion history of the Universe. In 1998 distance measurements using supernovae lead to the a paradigm shift in cosmology and fundamental physics: the expansion of the Universe is speeding up, contrary to the expectations from the attractive nature of gravitational forces: a mysterious new cosmic component, ”dark energy”, has been invoked to explain this unexpected phenomenon. This discovery was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics.
“Since Type Ia supernovae are very rare, occurring only once every several hundred years in a galaxy like ours, there have been very few opportunities to study these explosions in great detail. SN2014J in the nearby galaxy M82 is a very welcome exception”, says Rahman Amanullah a researcher at OKC.
Read the full press release at The Oscar Klein Centre blog
Download the paper (paywall) from IOP Science