Word: interstellar
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...Interstellar Influence? In other countries the sudden disappearance of rodent swarms is less spectacular. Yet they always disappear. Zoologists still wonder why. In northern Canada "an outburst of mouse-meat" is always accompanied by an increase of foxes, hawks and other mouse-loving predators. But mouse cycles in Britain, where predators have been largely killed off, are as regular and violent as in wilder lands...
...major mystery is how the animals maintain their fixed cycles in spite of all such interference. Zoologist Elton concludes that the master factor is still unknown. He believes it may prove to be of a hitherto-undetected meteorological nature, hints at possible interstellar influences...
Star Dust into Stars. In great interstellar clouds of dust, new planets and stars are now being formed (Fred L. Whipple of Harvard). In the Milky Way system, in which Earth is one of the most inconsiderable planets, star dust and gas contain as much matter as all the known stars. To congeal into stars, these 1/250,000-inch dust particles would require more billions of years than the calculated age of the universe-were it not that gravitation and the pressure of light whirl the dust in cur rents and thus speed up its condensation so immeasurably that Whipple...
Rotation of stars has also puzzled astronomers. Otto Struve of the University of Chicago weeded hypotheses down to this one : that stellar rotation too is caused by interstellar dust, colliding like hail stones with the stars. While the sun rotates with a velocity at its equator of only* Messier 51 in Canes Venatici (The Hounds) twelve miles per second, the stars of Aquila whirl at 9,360 miles per second. At such speeds, stars become unstable and shed rings of hot gas. Thus, as some stars are born of dust, others are destroyed...
Died. Dr. John Stanley Plaskett, 75, Canadian astronomer, a leading authority on the motions of faint stars, the Milky Way's rotation, the nature of matter in interstellar space; in Esquimalt, British Columbia. Two of the largest stars, "Plaskett's Twins," were named after...