Supernova leads to questions about death of stars

Astronomers have discovered a distant supernova, or exploded star, so large that it will force scientists to question their understanding of how certain older stars disintegrate.Scientists have believed that dying stars known as ‘’white dwarfs'’ can’t expand to more than 1.4 times the size of our sun without exploding in a massive thermonuclear blast.That rule, known as the ‘’Chandrasekhar Limit,'’ has served as the foundation of decades of astrophysical research and helped scientists estimate the size of the universe.But a team of astronomers on 20th September said that they have found a supernova in a galaxy 4 billion light years away that reached a mass twice that of the sun before exploding.‘’It should not be possible to break this limit but nature has found a way,'’ said Andy Howell, the University of Toronto researcher who discovered the supernova.‘’Now we have to figure out how nature did it,'’ Howell said in a statement.The star could have been spinning so fast that centrifugal force pushed it beyond the usual limit, Howell and other researchers said.The explosion also could have come from two white-dwarf stars merging.
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