2013ApJ...762...75W

There are insufficient super-soft (∼0.1 keV) X-ray sources in either spiral or elliptical galaxies to account for the rate of explosion of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) in either the single-degenerate or the double-degenerate scenarios. We quantify the amount of circumstellar matter that would be required to suppress the soft X-ray flux by yielding a column density in excess of 10²³/cm2. We summarize evidence that appropriate quantities of matter are extant in SNe Ia and in recurrent novae that may be supernova precursors. The obscuring matter is likely to have a large, but not complete, covering factor and to be substantially non-spherically symmetric. Assuming that much of the absorbed X-ray flux is re-radiated as blackbody radiation in the UV, we estimate that ≲ 100 sources might be detectable in the Galaxy Evolution Explorer All-sky Survey.