Vela Supernova in Antarctic Ice Cores?
The recently-discovered, nearby young supernova remnant in the southeast corner of the older Vela supernova remnant may have been seen in measurements of nitrate abundances in Antarctic ice cores. Such an interpretation of this twenty-year-old ice-core data would provide a more accurate dating of th...
| Main Authors: | , |
|---|---|
| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
1999
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.316.8324 http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/9909010v2.pdf |
| Summary: | The recently-discovered, nearby young supernova remnant in the southeast corner of the older Vela supernova remnant may have been seen in measurements of nitrate abundances in Antarctic ice cores. Such an interpretation of this twenty-year-old ice-core data would provide a more accurate dating of this supernova than is possible purely using astrophysical techniques. The resulting estimates of the supernova distance and light-arrival time are 200 pc and 700 years ago, implying an expansion speed of 5,000 km/s for the supernova remnant. Such an expansion speed has been argued elsewhere to imply the explosion to have been a 15 M ⊙ Type II supernova. This interpretation also adds new evidence to the debate as to whether nearby supernovae can measurably affect nitrate abundances in polar ice cores. Only a handful of supernovae have exploded over the last thousand years within several kpc of the Earth. To this select group – which is summarized1 in Table 1 – there has recently been a new addition, due to the discovery of a young supernova remnant in ROSAT X-ray data, RX J0852.0- 4622, quite nearby [1]. This remnant has RA 8 h 52 m and Declination −46o22 ′ (2000 epoch), and in the likely event that RX J0852.0- 4622 is |
|---|