Scientists have developed a way to recreate scaled supernova explosions in the laboratory with the help of lasers. This will help them to investigate one of the most energetic events in the universe. The researchers made use of laser beams 60,000 billion times more powerful than a laser pointer in a bid to devise method to study supernova explosions by recreating them in the lab.

It sounds incredible that astrophysical objects that are light years across can be studied by simply using the method in the laboratory, said Gianluca Gregori, a professor at Oxford University.

"In reality, the laws of physics are the same everywhere, and physical processes can be scaled from one to the other in the same way that waves in a bucket are comparable to waves in the ocean", said Gregori.

The Vulcan laser facility at Rutherford Appleton Lab of Science and Technology Facilities Council in Britain was used by the researchers to recreate the supernova.

Gregori added that physical processes can be scaled one to other in the same way that waves in a bucket are comparable to waves in the ocean. So, the experiment can provide significant information about events like the Cassiopeia A supernova

In the experiment, the scientists focused laser beams onto a small carbon rod that was kept in a chamber filled with a low-density gas. The rods exploded after temperatures of a few million degrees were generated by the lasers. The blast was so strong that is expanded throughout the gas.

All the physical variables were known by the experimentalists at a given point. They were aware about the temperature, the density, the velocities, said UChicago research scientist Petros Tzeferacos, a study co-author.