Word: interstellar
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...Interstellar Stuff. Even before they first met, Hoyle and Lyttleton had spotted independently what they both considered a key bit of new information: that the major part of the matter in the universe is not in the stars but in the thin stuff between them. On a clear night a man can see, even with the naked eye clouds of "interstellar matter." They look like black holes punched in the Milky Way. With a telescope the astronomer can see long dark filaments and great round blobs, some so huge that it takes light 100 years (at 186,000 miles...
Many astronomers had agreed that the stars are probably condensations formed from interstellar gas. Hoyle and Lyttleton went further: they concluded, after long mathematical labor, that a star's "fate" (what happens to it during its life of many billions of years) is determined by how much interstellar gas and dust it has managed to gather. It may capture only a small amount, and so remain a commonplace star, like the sun. It may capture a lot, become unstable and eventually blow...
...result is a jumble of the interstellar and the folksy. Characters who are neither living people nor vivid symbols traffic in blown-up emotions and rouged-up words. Besides being high-pitched and mawkish, Burning Bright is frequently dull. Steinbeck might have done far better with a few people talking simple prose in a suburb, might have remembered that writers best achieve the universal through the particular. Blake, who gave him his title (Tyger, tyger, burning bright) could also have given him a good cue: To see the world in a grain of sand...
Primary purpose of the expedition is to gather new knowledge on the central star clouds of these southern constellations. Another aim is to study interstellar dust and gases with the hope of finding clues to how stars are born...
Whipple urged his listeners to keep on the lookout for micro-meteorites. Large meteorites that hit the earth as flaming "fireballs" are believed to be part of the solar system. A few of the micro-meteorites floating gently down, said Whipple, may be the only specimens available of "interstellar solids." Geologists should look for micro-meteorites, Whipple said, in places like the Cretaceous chalk beds. Many astronomers believe that a planet blew up fairly recently; if so, there ought to be strata rich in its micrometeorite fragments to date the explosion...