A team of scientists from the University of Oxford has recreated a supernova (stellar explosion) in the laboratory with the help of the Vulcan laser from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (United Kingdom), with beams 60,000 million times more powerful than a laser pointer .
The research, published in the journal Nature Physics , was inspired by the detection of magnetic fields in Cassiopeia A (supernova remnant) roughly 100 times stronger than those in adjacent interstellar space. The experts used supercomputers from the Argonne National Laboratory (USA) to carry out 20 million hours of simulations due to the complexity of the experiment.
After this, the scientists focused laser beams on a carbon rod placed in a chamber filled with a low-density gas. The lasers , generating temperatures of a few million degrees, caused the rod to explode, creating an explosion that spread throughout the gas.
" The experiment showed that as the blast wave from the explosion passes through the network it becomes irregular and turbulent , just like the Cassiopeia A images," says Gianluca Gregori, co-author of the study, who also concludes that the Cosmic turbulence could have amplified magnetic fields to the strength observed in interstellar space.
