In a recent study submitted to High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena, a team of researchers from Japan discussed strategies to observe and possibly predict precursor signatures for an explosion from Local Type II and Galactic supernovae.
Why it matters — This study has the potential to help us better understand both how and when supernovae could occur throughout the universe, with supernovae being the plural form of supernova. But just how important is it to detect supernovae before they actually happen?
“From my perspective, it is important in two aspects,” said Daichi Tsuna, who is an astrophysicist at the Research Center for the Early Universe at the University of Tokyo, and the lead author of the study.
“First, while we know that supernovae are explosions signaling the death of massive stars, what happens near the end of its life is still a mystery. In fact, supernova precursors, suggested by recent observational works, are not predicted from the standard theory of stellar evolution,” she says.
“Our paper claims that we can probe this precursor in depth by future observations, which can help deepen our understanding of stellar evolution and refine the existing theory. Second, finding a supernova precursor would allow a very early alert of a near-future supernova and will help extend the available time frame to coordinate multi-messenger (light, neutrinos, and gravitational waves) observations.”