Thermonuclear (Type Ia) supernovae are important astrophysical objects increasingly used in cosmology to measure size, curvature, and other parameters of the universe. The key physical processes involved in Type Ia explosions are turbulent deflagrations, detonations, and deflagration-to-detonation transition (DDT).

They have striking similarities to deflagrations, detonations, and DDT in terrestrial conditions. Numerical modeling of Type Ia supernovae including the process of DDT during the explosion explained many observational properties of these supernovae and lead to the determination of the Hubble constant (Ho) which is now in a good agreement with recent measurements of Ho based on the Hubble Space Telescope observations of extragalactic Cepheids.

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1999-2000 Reactive Flow and Transport Phenomena