hot cocoon tagged posts

An international team of scientists, including astronomers from the Universities of Leicester, Bath and Warwick, have found evidence for the existence of a ‘hot cocoon’ of material enveloping a relativistic jet escaping a dying star. This research is been published online today (Wednesday 16 January) and in print in Nature tomorrow (Thursday 17 January).

A relativistic jet is a very powerful phenomena which involves plasma jets shooting out of black holes at close to the speed of light, and can extend across millions of light years. Observations of supernova SN2017iuk taken shortly after its onset showed it expanding rapidly, at one third of the speed of light...