Well, we must be very careful here. I know that you're a smart cookie and you know far more than the average bear. All the same, I would slightly modify your remark "implosion through explosion" my friend.

When a supernova enter its final death throes, there are two separate and essentially dintinct processes, there is FIRST an implosion, and THEN an explosion.

To understand this fully you must think about a kind of "balance of forces." Now, the force of gravity is one of the oldest influences known to mankind. It is relentless, and as I said in a class I once taught "gravity never sleeps." The attractive force between the moon and Earth goes on and on and on throughout the eons and the first primitive chimpanzees who lived millions of years ago saw objects consistently fall to the ground, just as much as we today see things sliding down to the ground and so on.

However, there is another force at work, and this is the *pressure* force associated with a gaseous body. The atoms in our atmosphere are NOT pulled violently to the ground by Earth's gravity, but they have their own energy which carries them upwards due to their motions. They all fly about wildly and randomly in all directions, and even a steady gravity is not enough to "tame" them and bring them down to our feet.

If gravity COULD conquer the air molecules and force them all down to our feet, then there would be nothing to breath at the level of our faces!

It is important to realize that molecules always "push" via their random and chaotic motion, as they *bounce off* an object, each little molecule undergoing a miniature "collision" process.

This is why a metal tank which is over-filled with oxygen or nitrogen has so much internal pressure on the inner walls of the tank.

And so, what about a star?

A star has incredible pressure in its interior, because their are extremely hot Hydrogen nuclei there which are undergoing violent collisions and undergoing nuclear fusion, which is creating still more heat.

Well, all that incredible million degree heat creates pressure.

And so you have a balance going on between the outwards pressure within the stellar core and the inwards pressure of the "weight" of the star, as gravity is trying to crush it.

Well, we said that gravity is "eternal"

However nuclear fusion is NOT!!

When the fuel for fusion craps out, there is not "gas station" the star can go to, to refuel!

And so the fusion process MUST die off.

The source of internal heat "shuts off"

And THAT is when gravity takes over!

THE IMPLOSION: Gravity crushes the star down and the entire content of the star gets crushed to a gigantic ball of neutrons called a "neutron star" or "pulsar"

THE EXPLOSION: The neutron star is far far harder than any diamond you've ever dreamed of. Not even gravitation can crush a neutron star!!! THEREFORE all of the material outside the core BOUNCES off the far-harder-than-diamond neutron star, and you get a colossal explosion. And I mean an explosion which releases the whole power of a galaxy for a period of several months!

And so, we have an implosion when gravity crushes the star down to the size of a city, and then an explosion when the neutron star "stands its ground" and all the outer layers of the star then bounce back upwards!

Doug