A Milky Way supernova could be visible from Earth sometime in the next 50 years.
Researchers said there is almost a 100 percent chance the event will at least be able to be seen through a telescope. There is only believed to be a 20 percent chance the supernova will be visible to the naked eye, an Ohio State University news release reported.
Researchers have never seen what happens right at the beginning of a supernova, which is the death of a star.
"We see all these stars go supernova in other galaxies, and we don't fully understand how it happens. We think we know, we say we know, but that's not actually 100 percent true," Christopher Kochanek, professor of astronomy at Ohio State and the Ohio Eminent Scholar in Observational Cosmology, said. "Today, technologies have advanced to the point that we can learn enormously more about supernovae if we can catch the next one in our galaxy and study it with all our available tools."
Researchers have calculated the available data on supernovas and used computer models to try to figure out how the process works. Their predictions have seemed to be accurate, but the calculations are no match for witnessing a supernova in real time.
Studying the Milky Way is considerably easier now that researchers have sensors to detect neutrinos, which are particles emitted from the core of the dying star.
"Every few days, we have the chance to observe supernovae happening outside of our galaxy," doctoral student Scott Adams said. "But there's only so much you can learn from those, whereas a galactic supernova would show us so much more. Our neutrino detectors and gravitational wave detectors are only sensitive enough to take measurements inside our galaxy, where we believe that a supernova happens only once or twice a century."
"Despite the ease with which astronomers find supernovae occurring outside our galaxy, it wasn't obvious before that it would be possible to get complete observations of a supernova occurring within our galaxy. Soot dims the optical light from stars near the center of the galaxy by a factor of nearly a trillion by the time it gets to us. Fortunately, infrared light is not affected by this soot as much and is only dimmed by a factor of 20," he said.
The researchers could detect the supernova's neutrinos, which would be seen before the explosion happens which could take days or even months to detect infrared cameras.
The researchers hope the Super-Kamiokande (Super-K) neutrino detector located in Japan would sound an alert as soon as the supernova occurred. The infrared detectors would be able to locate the location immediately, before it brightened to the usual point of detection.
"We need some way to tell immediately that a burst is due to a supernova," Beacom said.
