Hold a small rubber ballon top of a basketball, and drop them together toward the floor. What happen to the small ball? Does that help you understand what happens to the outer layers of a supernova as they collapse on the core?
When you hold a small rubber balloon on top of a basketball and drop them together towards the floor, the small balloon will bounce off the basketball, in most cases. This happens because the air inside the balloon acts as a cushion, absorbing some of the impact force.
However, this analogy doesn't adequately explain what happens to the outer layers of a supernova as they collapse on the core. In a supernova, the collapse is driven by the gravitational force, and the outer layers undergo a violent explosion rather than a simple bounce.
To understand what happens to the outer layers of a supernova, we need to consider the process of stellar evolution. When a massive star exhausts its nuclear fuel, it can no longer sustain the fusion reactions that counterbalance the inward gravitational force. The core of the star collapses under its own weight, resulting in a supernova.
During the collapse, the outer layers of the star begin to fall inward due to the intense gravitational force. The infalling material collides with the core, resulting in a shockwave that propagates outward. This shockwave heats and compresses the surrounding material, causing it to explode outward in a powerful explosion called a supernova.
Therefore, the analogy of a small balloon on top of a basketball doesn't capture the complex physics involved in a supernova's collapse. It is a much more violent and energetic process in a supernova.