puffadda

I'm an undergraduate who's done a bit of work in Type Ias over the last couple years. From what I've seen there's a lot of debate in the field as to the extent to which these supernovae are caused by the merging of two white dwarfs as opposed to a single white dwarf accumulating mass and then exploding. I know the jury is still out on this so to speak, but do you have an opinion? And if it does turn out that most Ias are caused by white dwarf mergers do you expect this to hurt their ability to be used as standardizable candles?

P.S. Are you taking any grad students next year?

Hello, Dr. Kaku. First off I just wanted to say thank you for inspiring me to go into physics through your books and television appearances. I'm in my first year at the University of Oklahoma (consider this an open invite to our weekly colloquium!), and I'm about to jump in over my head into astrophysics research. I was wondering if you had any advice for young aspiring scientists just beginning their climb up the academic ladder?