Six indications of radical new physics in supernovae Ia

Abstract

After more than forty years since the basic standard model for supernovae Ia (SN Ia) was proposed many astronomers are still hopeful that this phenomenon will ultimately be understood in terms of Newtonian gravity plus nuclear and particle physics as they existed in the 1930's. In spite of this fact there are at least six nagging puzzles in supernovae physics that suggest some radical new physics input may be necessary. "Radical" in this context means a physics idea that did not exist in the 1930's and that is still not experimentally confirmed in 2017.

Host galaxy effects in the SUSY model for Supernovae Ia

“…In contradistinction to the binary models we have noted [3] that there are at least six major indications that SN Ia may be due not to mass growth to the Chandrasekhar maximum but, instead, to a phase transition in a possibly isolated white dwarf. Some years ago, Sim et al [4] showed that, if a suitable trigger could be found, the detonation of an isolated white dwarf with mass between 0.97 and 1.15 could lead to good agreement with observed SN Ia properties.…”

“…These separate energies are calculated in ref. [3] and elsewhere. For instance, as treated there, E kin = 5.6 10 −4 (1.22M ⊙ + 0.2M) .…”

“…In the susy model, as laid out in [5], [6], and [3], every white dwarf has a natural massdependent lifetime. In a restricted range of mass, the lifetime ranges from a small fraction of a gigayear to gigayear scales.…”

“…In the double degenerate (DD) scenario this fraction must, most likely [1], be above 50% although no high mass binary white dwarf systems have as yet been observed. If this test is passed, if the other counterindications [3] to binary models are overcome, and if the fits to the DTD and EJMD are equal or better than those of the phase transition model, one might prefer the binary model as possibly being simpler.…”

“…It is commonly thought that the progenitors of normal type Ia supernovae are carbonoxygen mixtures not because of any direct evidence [29] but because such mixtures lead to more successful standard model simulations once fusion is somehow triggered. As seen for example in [3], a roughly fifty-fifty mixture of carbon/oxygen fusing to a roughly fifty-fifty mixture of iron group elements and intermediate mass elements will produce enough fusion energy to match experiment. In this case the maximum amount of energy input from a source beyond the standard model is sharply limited although some such energy input is needed to trigger fusion.…”