Word: mon
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...mon, man, you've got to be kidding...
Astrophysicist Low, who is on the staff of both the University of Arizona and Rice, turned his attention to R Mon, as it is called, while searching for stars in the process of formation. "We knew that stars must be forming in the universe around us," he says. And wherever they were, those new stars should have been extremely bright. But strangely, none could be found. Then Low learned from a visiting astronomer that R Mon seemed to be emitting an abnormally large amount of infra-red radiation. He decided to check on the star with his germanium bolometer...
Mathematical Model. After connecting the bolometer to the 5-ft. infra-red telescope at the University of Arizona's Catalina observatory near Tucson, Low made careful measurements of R Mon's total energy output over a wide range of wave lengths. He found that the energy produced was much greater than earlier observations had indicated (about 870 times that of the sun), and the star was radiating with inexplicable intensity at the longest wave lengths. On the theory that something was obscuring the visible light, Low asked Smith to help work out a mathematical model of a bright...
Starting with a mathematical model of the present distribution of interplanetary dust, they produced a set of equations describing the primitive solar system when, like R Man, it was surrounded by a vast cloud of dust. Low checked the predictions of this model against his R Mon readings, and found an almost perfect match...
Contracting Cloud. Though R Mon is a near neighbor, only 2,000 light-years away, its characteristics have universal implications. Most astronomers agree that the sun formed from a slowly rotating nebula-a cloud of dust and gas that gradually contracted because of gravitation, and began to rotate faster. When pressures at the dense center of the shrinking cloud produced enough heat, thermonuclear reactions took place and the sun began to burn, still surrounded by the outlying portions of the cloud-apparently the current state of R Man's evolution. As more of the particles fell toward the burning...