Word: earthly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...fierce battle raged in Australia, where some veterans groups denounced Hirohito as the "biggest war criminal on earth." Said Bruce Ruxton, Victorian president of the Returned Services League: "Going to his funeral would be like going to the funeral of the devil." Prime Minister Bob Hawke skirted a decision by acceding to protocol, which does not usually require the Australian head of government to attend the funeral of a head of state...
Supernovae, in which Kirshner has specialized since his graduate school years at the California Institute of Technology, are stars which have ended their lives as energy producing bodies with a tremendous explosion. If the phenomenon occurs close enough to the Earth, it is observable in the sky as a bright star, Kirshner says...
Unfortunately for Kirshner and his fellow astronomers, who hope to find answers to a variety of astronomical questions from studying these stellar explosions, observable supernovae do not occur very often. In fact, 1987 was the first time since 1604 that Earth dwellers witnessed an actual explosion close enough to the Earth to be seen with the naked eye, Kirshner said, thus making the event the first young supernova to be carefully analyzed with modern scientific equipment. Astronomers, including Kirshner, are still collecting data from the phenomenon, called 1987A...
...double supernova, however, was collected by Kirshner and his co-workers while examining the remnant of an ancient explosion, which took place more than 4000 years ago. Astronomical observers uncover about 20 of such stellar fossils, which are less useful than phenomena occuring more recently and closer to the Earth...
...star's abudant light elements, like hydrogen and helium, into heavy elements, like iron. "There is a real sense that supernova elements are actually the physical origin of [the heavy] chemicals in our body," Kirshner says. The elements these supernovae create are in everything, he says, including "life, earth, iron and gold...