Multifragmentation reactions and properties of hot stellar matter at subnuclear densities

We point out similarity of thermodynamic conditions reached in intermediate energy nuclear collisions and in supernova explosions. We show that a statistical approach, which has been previously applied for nuclear multifragmentation reactions, can be very useful for description of electro-neutral stellar matter. Then properties of hot unstable nuclei extracted from analysis of multifragmentation data can be used for construction of a realistic equation of state of supernova matter.