A hypernova (collapsar) is a hypothetical type of high-energy supernova formed when an extremely massive star collapses due to the cessation of thermonuclear reactions within it. Initially, the name referred to an explosion with energy that exceeded one hundred times the luminosity of an ordinary supernova. Later the term came to refer to explosions of the most massive stars, with masses several dozen times that of the Sun.1)
A false vacuum is a metastable region of space that exhibits properties of a vacuum state but is unstable due to the possibility of tunneling to a lower energy state. According to inflationary theory, our Universe was once in a false vacuum state of even higher energy, but it collapsed, resulting in a massive expansion and giving mass to elementary particles. As a result of the collapse through the process of quantum tunneling, a true vacuum is created from the false one. 2)
The BOOMERanG experiment conducted in 1998 and 2003 proved that the Universe is flat. The experiment consisted of two flights over Antarctica by a stratospheric balloon equipped with a telescope with measuring instruments. The data from the experiment determined the shape of the Universe to be flat and confirmed the consistency of the data with cold dark matter models and cosmological inflation scenarios. 3)
The accidental discovery of microwave background radiation (CMB), which served as confirmation of the Big Bang theory, was made in 1964 by Wilson and Penzias, who, working on a new type of antenna, observed noise coming from a source that was difficult to detect. After removing all potential causes - including pigeon droppings on the antenna - they found that the signal was coming from space, uniformly from all directions. They were awarded the Nobel Prize for this discovery in 1978. 4)
The solar wind is a stream of plasma flowing from the Sun, consisting primarily of protons. The motion of the particles is deformed by the magnetic field of the Sun itself and the wind from nearby stars, as a result of which the spherical symmetry of the outflow is not preserved (the space “filled” by the solar wind is not a sphere). 5)