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摘要

Do we understand the violent and cosmologically significant stellar explosions known as type-la supernovae? Yes and no, as astronomers participating in a conference in California agreed. In mid-March, more than 100 astronomers converged on the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, California, for an international conference on so-called type-Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). Understanding these stellar explosions has a high priority: measurements of their brightness in the late 1990s revealed the existence of a mysterious 'dark energy' permeating space and accelerating the Universe's expansion. This conference was not primarily about exploiting SNe Ia for cosmology, but about assessing our current state of knowledge of where they come from, what exactly their stellar progenitors are, how they work, and how they explode.