Physics Department News
An article focused on an extremely rare, high mass, compact binary star discovery has been featured on the cover of Nature Astronomy
The discovery was first published online in Nature Astronomy in April, by then PhD student, and now postdoc, James Munday and has since been featured on the cover of Nature Astronomy’s June issue. James, supervised by Dr Ingrid Pelisoli and Prof Pier-Emmanuel Tremblay, discovered a type Ia supernova progenitor within a mere 50 parsecs. Type Ia supernovae are standardisable candles used to measure cosmological distances and were instrumental in the discovery of the accelerated expansion of the Universe (Nobel Prize in Physics 2011).
However, the binary systems that are the progenitors of type Ia supernovae remain elusive, with only a handful known in our Galaxy – orders of magnitude less than predicted by theoretical models. Using a new selection method relying on data from the recent Gaia space mission, James identified a new progenitor in our galactic doorstep. Its proximity implies an observationally derived rate of type Ia supernova in our Galaxy twice as large as previously estimated – though still far below theoretical predictions. The search for the elusive progenitors continues, as one of the key goals in Dr Pelisoli’s Royal Society-funded research. James submitted his thesis in June and will be having his viva in September this year.