科学家发现惊人的超新星

科学家们在发现破纪录的超新星后惊呆了

Scientists have a pretty good handle on the life cycle of various stars. They know the types of stars that are likely to die in fiery supernova blasts and they know that not all supernovas are created equal. Still, space has many untold secrets, and a new study published in the Astrophysical Journal reveals that scientists had their understanding of supernovas thrown into question after observing an explosion so massive that they initially thought their instruments had broken.

科学家们对各种恒星的生命周期掌握得相当好。他们知道可能死于超新星爆炸的恒星类型，也知道并非所有的超新星都是一样的。尽管如此，太空仍有许多不为人知的秘密，发表在《天体物理学杂志》(Astrophysical Journal)上的一项新研究显示，科学家们在观测了一次如此巨大的爆炸之后，对超新星的理解出现了问题，他们最初以为自己的仪器已经坏了。

The explosion in question, called SN2016iet, was first spotted back in 2016, but it took a further three years for astronomers to truly understand what they were seeing.

这次被称为SN2016iet的爆炸最早是在2016年被发现的，但是天文学家又花了三年时间才真正理解他们所看到的东西。

Center for Astrophysics/Harvard

“When we first realized how thoroughly unusual SN2016iet is my reaction was ‘Whoa — did something go horribly wrong with our data?’” Harvard grad Sebastian Gomez, lead author of the paper, said in a statement. “After a while, we determined that SN2016iet is an incredible mystery, located in a previously uncatalogued galaxy 1 billion light-years from Earth.”

“当我们第一次意识到SN2016iet是多么不寻常时，我的反应是‘哇——我们的数据出了什么严重的问题吗?”该论文的主要作者、哈佛大学毕业生塞巴斯蒂安戈麦斯在一份声明中说。“过了一段时间，我们确定SN2016iet是一个令人难以置信的谜，它位于距离地球10亿光年的一个以前未被编目的星系中。”

Working backwards from what they could see of the star’s current state, the team determined that the blast was created by a star 200 times as massive as our sun. Researchers believe it shed a whopping 85 percent of its mass during its brief existence, which ultimately ended in a colossal detonation. The huge amount of material the star shed, along with the supernova explosion itself, produced a sight that left scientists scratching their heads for years.

从他们所能看到的恒星的当前状态向后看，研究小组确定爆炸是由一颗200倍于太阳质量的恒星产生的。研究人员认为，在它短暂的存在期间，它的质量下降了高达85%，最终导致了巨大的爆炸。恒星脱落的大量物质，连同超新星爆炸本身，产生了一种景象，让科学家们困惑了多年。

“Everything about this supernova looks different — its change in brightness with time, its spectrum, the galaxy it is located in and even where it’s located within its galaxy,” Professor Dr. Edo Berger explains. “We sometimes see supernovas that are unusual in one respect, but otherwise are normal; this one is unique in every possible way.”

“这颗超新星的一切看起来都不一样——它的亮度随时间、光谱、所在星系的变化，甚至它在星系内的位置也在变化，”EdoBerger教授解释说。“我们有时会看到超新星在某一方面是不寻常的，但在其他方面是正常的，这个超新星在所有可能的方面都是独一无二的。”

Going forward, the team plans to continue to observe SN2016iet and, hopefully, learn more about its past and future. This will be made easier by the fact that the explosion was incredibly bright and located in a bare area of the sky, so there may still be more it can teach us.

展望未来，该团队计划继续观察SN2016IET，并希望进一步了解其过去和未来。这次爆炸非常明亮，而且位于天空的一个光秃秃的区域，这一事实将使这一切变得更加容易，所以它可能还能教给我们更多。