At the end of its active life, a massive star will experience sudden collapse. This is followed by a rebound to produce a supernova explosion. While the basic mechanism has been known for some time, supernova models have been unable to reproduce the observed energies of these events. The PI showed that convective instabilities occur near the core of the rebounding star which he believes are of central importance to the explosion and which will rectify the energy deficiency. With previous NSF support, he has developed a hydrodynamic code to study the development of the instabilities and now proposes to embark on multi-dimensional studies of supernova explosions.
