Word: fowlers
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Where, then, can this vast amount of energy come from? Hoyle and Fowler rule out hydrogen fusion and other nuclear reactions that go on in the sun. Such reactions do not take place suddenly enough, or provide enough energy. The only reasonable remaining source of energy is gravitation, which can grow incredibly strong when a very large amount of matter is gathered together. This energy is released when something happens that permits a large mass of material to fall toward a center of gravitational attraction...
Viewed through the far-sighted optical telescopes of modern astronomy, the great spiral galaxies that dot the depths of space look as stable as anything in the universe. But the view may be a cosmic illusion. Astrophysicists Fred Hoyle and William A. Fowler, from Caltech. told the American Physical Society that galaxies often explode with improbable energy. Even the Milky Way Galaxy, of which the earth and the entire solar system are only a tiny part, may have blown up many times already-and could pop off again...
Hoyle and Fowler base their theory on the mysterious double sources of radio energy that radio telescopes have found in the sky. At first those distant transmitters of energy seemed to be associated with nothing at all-at least nothing that could be photographed with optical telescopes. Then Caltech's giant interferometer in Owens Valley (two 90-ft. radio telescopes working in unison) mapped many double sources with unprecedented accuracy. When the new radio map of the sky was superimposed on photographs taken with the 200-in. Palomar telescope, a galaxy was often neatly bracketed between paired spots...
Relativistic Limit. A galactic explosion starts, say Hoyle and Fowler, when a large mass of gas accumulates in the center of a galaxy's nucleus. The gas behaves like a very large star, equal in mass to 100 million suns. For a while it burns hydrogen and changes it to helium just as normal stars do, and the temperature in its center rises to 70 million degrees. Then the star burns its helium, forming heavier elements. Its central temperature rises to 500 million degrees, while its powerful gravitation causes it to shrink toward its superheated middle. In spite...
According to Hoyle and Fowler's figures, an exploding galactic star is always somewhat irregular, and the part of it that collapses to a small dense core expends most of its gravitational energy. The rest of the star, absorbing this same energy, is blasted away at nearly the speed of light. Some of its material slows down as it tangles with the flat disk of stars and gas that make up the galaxy. It is the parts that move out from the top and bottom of the galaxy that escape to form turbulent clouds that shine as powerful radio...