LOW HUBBLE CONSTANT FROM THE PHYSICS OF TYPE IA SUPERNOVAE

Two physical methods for determining luminosities and distances of typ e Ia supernovae, the spectral fitting expanding atmosphere method and the Ni-56 radioactivity method, depend on the interval between the tim es of explosion and maximum brightness, but in differing ways. By requ iring consistency between the two methods we derive blue and visual ab solute magnitudes M(B) similar or equal to M(V) similar or equal to -1 9.74 +/- 0.45 mag which, together with the ridge line of type Ia super novae in the magnitude-redshift diagram, constrain the Hubble constant to be 50(-10)(+12) km s(-1) Mpc(-1).