Posted: Apr 26, 2012 12:00 am
I think it depends on the definition of explode. As someone already said, detonation usually refers to burning with a supersonic shock and deflagration with subsonic combustion wave. Both are commonly called explosions. A wiki article differentiates the two via the terms high explosion and low explosion. In astrophysics, a type 1a supernova is mostly deflagration (the jury is still out on whether there is any change over to detonation when the thermonuclear flame gets close the to surface of the white dwarf) but I don't think anyone would say it is not an explosion 