• Question: In my point of view I can't exactly see how you could have an explosion in space what do you think?

    Asked by harryfelix to Clare on 17 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Clare Burrage

      Clare Burrage answered on 17 Mar 2012:

      Explosions happen when a lot of stuff that was packed into a small space gets blown out very quickly into a large space. This requires a lot of energy, so it wouldn’t just happen in the vacuum of space, but it can happen inside stars. An exploding star is called a supernova.

Comments

  • Photo: Mario

    Mario commented on :

    even “empty” space can be thought as a continuous soup of creation of particles and antiparticles. These creations are measurable, so you can in principle have collisions even in pure vacuum