Word: interstellar
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...speculators would bet their Nobels on such musings. But Berry tosses aution to the solar wind. In two or threem centuries, he believes, a future NASA could launch a great fleet of robot spaceships to attract bits of free-floating iron in near by interstellar space, like children herding filings with magnets. Eventually so much matter would be gathered up that ,he particles would begin attracting one another by their mutual gravity and compress themselves into a black hole of some ten solar masses. The purpose of this iron sun? To provide instantaneous transportation across the heavens for anyone brave...
There may be, as the Book of Ecclesiastes says, "no new thing under the Sun," but there is definitely something new way out beyond it. Astronomers know that stars, and possibly entire solar systems, are constantly being born in the womblike gas clouds of interstellar space (TIME cover, Dec. 27). Now, they may have a chance to observe a delivery. Scientists from the University of Arizona and NASA'S Ames Research Center at Mountain View, Calif., announced last week that they have identified a discshaped object in the constellation Cygnus that is not only an evolving star, but could...
...could be. Astronomers generally theorize that stars and the planets that orbit them condense out of spiraling discs that are formed out of clouds of interstellar material. Thompson and Erickson believe MWC 349 is going through just such a process now. They think the star, which may be little more than 10,000 years old (the sun has been around about 5 billion years), is still developing. Some planets may have formed beyond the edge of MWC 349's luminous disc. They also believe more planets could form, closer to the star, as the disc condenses and cools...
...idea comes from M.I.T. Astrophysicist Alan Barrett, who decided that the same electronic wizardry that was enabling him to tune in to microwaves from free-floating molecules in interstellar space could have a down-to-earth application. If they were reduced in size, he reasoned, the sensitive antennas could even pick up the weak microwave (or heat) emissions from a tumor...
...great interstellar clouds also contain another kind of fertilizer. In 1963 a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Lincoln Laboratory used a radio telescope to discover the hydroxyl radical (two-thirds of the water molecule) in space. Since then, more than three dozen molecules have been found floating in the galactic clouds, including those of methane, formaldehyde, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, ethyl alcohol and carbon monoxide...