On the assumptions that Type Ia supernovae are thermonuclear disruptions of carbon-oxygen white dwarfs near the Chandrasekhar mass, that their light curves are powered by the radioactive decay of ^56^Ni and ^56^Co, and that scatter in their peak luminosities can be disregarded, the ejected nickel mass, the peak luminosity, and the value of the Hubble constant are estimated. The nickel mass is constrained by the direct spectroscopic detection of elements of intermediate mass and by the explosion kinetic energy as inferred from the spectroscopic velocities. The peak luminosity follows from the nickel mass and the rise time to maximum light. The luminosity, combined with the observational Hubble diagram for Type Ia supernovae, corresponds to a Hubble constant of 61 +/- 10 km s^-1^ Mpc^-1^.
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David Branch (1992) studied this question.