Current Models
The type codes described above that astronomers give to supernovas are taxonomic in nature: the type number describes the light observed from the supernova, not necessarily its cause. For example, type Ia supernovae are produced from degenerate white dwarf progenitors by accretion of material while the spectrally similar type Ib/c are produced from massive Wolf-Rayet progenitors by core collapse. The following summarizes what astronomers currently believe are the most plausible explanations for supernovae.
Read more about this topic: Supernova
Famous quotes containing the words current and/or models:
““I” is a militant social tendency, working to hold and enlarge its place in the general current of tendencies. So far as it can it waxes, as all life does. To think of it as apart from society is a palpable absurdity of which no one could be guilty who really saw it as a fact of life.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“Today it is not the classroom nor the classics which are the repositories of models of eloquence, but the ad agencies.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)