What makes a supernova? Scientists thought they knew. New X-ray
research questions the origins of a key type of supernova, and
may bend one of astronomy's go-to rulers. One of astronomy's
most heavily used tools for measuring distances may be less
reliable than researchers have assumed, according to a pair of
astrophysicists.Skip to next paragraph Subscribe Today to the
Monitor Their conclusion, which will be published in Thursday’s
issue of the journal Nature, doesn't appear to cast doubt on
decades of discoveries about the structure and evolution of the
universe that relied on the tool – a form of exploding star
called a Type 1A supernova. These events "are the most important
explosions in cosmology," says Marat Gilfanov, one of the two
researchers involved in the Nature study. In principle the new
result "muddies the waters" for such stunning discoveries as the
existence of dark energy, says astrophysicist Mario Livio, with
the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. At the
least, the result – if i