Supernova shockwave velocity measured accurately

Washington: Researchers have succeeded in precisely measuring the expansion velocity of a shockwave of the supernova remnant W44.

The remnant is located in the constellation of Aquila, approximately 10,000 light-years away from our solar system. The team, led by Tomoro Sashida and Tomoharu Oka (Keio University), observed the high-temperature and high-density molecular gas in the millimeter/submillimeter wave ranges. The analysis shows that the expansion velocity of the W44 shockwave is 12.9 plus/minus 0.2 km/sec. In addition, it became clear that the supernova explosion released kinetic energy of 1-3 x 10 to the power of 50 erg into the interstellar medium. The energy emitted from the Sun is approximately 3.6 x 10 to the power 33 erg/sec. Can you image how enormous amount of energy is released from the supernova explosion? Furthermore, other molecular gas with an extremely high velocity of higher than 100 km/sec was also detected. The origin of this super-high-velocity molecular gas remains unclear at the present time. ANI