A pair instability supernova occurs when the furnace of reactions in the heart of a star are no longer powerful enough to act against its massive gravity. Then the star collapses spectacularly, as seen here in an image of supernova remnant E0102-72.
Credit: NASA/Chandra
"Early galaxies are analogous to buckets of gas, with the gas confined by gravity rather than by walls. The supernova explosion blows the gas out of the first bucket. This moving gas then acts like a wind which in turn blows the gas out of small nearby galaxies," Wyithe said.
"[The research] doesn't address other issues about how much gas there is in the first place and what happens when there are many haloes [surrounding the supernovae]," he said. But added that the study is "solid piece of work."
"Analytic calculations like these can sometimes give quite good information, and I think in this case it does," said Wyithe. "It's not understood fully what role the first stars played in the reionisation of the early universe. This is a first step on the way to understanding that."
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