Word: crabs
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...stars have intense magnetic fields generating precisely spaced electromagnetic pulses that can be picked up by radio telescopes. Some 440 pulsars have been discovered so far, all of them thought to be remnants of Type II supernovas. The youngest found to date sits right at the center of the Crab nebula, site of the great supernova...
...July 4, 1054, which suddenly blazed in the constellation Taurus, near Orion, that is perhaps most significant to present-day astronomers. It exploded only about 6,000 light-years away and left behind the slowly writhing, gradually expanding and delicately beautiful cloud of glowing gas known as the Crab nebula. Studies of the structure and dynamics of the Crab have provided modern astronomers with important insights into supernova explosions...
...Crab supernova was, at its brightest, as brilliant as the planet Venus and visible during the daytime; its appearance was noted not only by the Chinese and Japanese but possibly also by Indians in the American Southwest. The New World evidence comes in the form of images carved and painted on rock walls in northern Arizona showing a celestial object adjacent to a crescent moon. There is no proof that this primitive artwork represents the supernova, but archaeological dating techniques show the Indians were in the area when the star flared, and astronomers have calculated that the supernova indeed appeared...
Europeans left no known record of the Crab supernova, although some probably saw it, and no evidence has been found that they saw an 1181 stellar explosion. It was not until November 1572 that Europe joined the fraternity of distinguished supernova recorders. Although Danish Astronomer Tycho Brahe was not the first to spot the new star that appeared in the constellation Cassiopeia, he ensured that posterity would associate his name with it by writing a book titled De Nova Stella (Concerning the New Star...
...little national-pride music, maestro. Thank you. Our very own United States of America (rooty-toot-toot) makes the best TV beer commercials (tantara) in the universe. Nobody else is close, unless it is some race of advertising geniuses in the Crab nebula, and that is not close, and anyway the Crabs do not have John Madden or Mickey Spillane, so forget them...