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Asked by funkymonkey to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 16 Mar 2012.
Question: What is supernova?
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Karen Masters answered on 16 Mar 2012:
A star which explodes and gets really bright. Literally nova means “new star” and supernova is a really bright “new star”.
For example when Betelgeuse goes supernova (some time in the next 1 million years) it’ll be bright enough to see during the day time for a little while.
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Leila Battison answered on 17 Mar 2012:
When an star explodes, it will give out more energy (in light and heat) than the sun will in its whole lifetime, and will throw out most of the stuff that makes it up. So it will appear really really bright in the sky for about a month…
New stars can form in the cloud of gas and dust that supernovae leave behind, over millions of years.
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Nazim Bharmal answered on 19 Mar 2012:
Most stars balance the huge force of gravity with the energy they output with the nuclear reactions in their core. When the fuel for the nuclear reactions runs out, the star starts to collapse on itself and that collapse can “bounce” and explode out. That process is part of a supernova, which looks like an enormous explosion. There can be many results left over, including neutron stars and even black holes.
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