Word: nebula
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Among modern astronomers, an old theory of the origin of the solar system was back in fashion. German Philosopher Immanuel Kant had speculated in 1755 that the sun and its planets were formed by condensation out of a gaseous cloud. For a while astronomers supported Kant, but later his "nebula hypothesis" lost scientific favor. More modern astronomers, notably Sir James Jeans, have conceded that the sun may have been formed that way, but not the planets. To explain the planets, Jeans suggested that another star must have grazed the sun, pulling out a thread of sun-matter that gathered into...
Menzel, who plans to expand the whole Climax set-up, has written several the-ories on the cause of the aurora and magnetic storms. This summer he proved that a ring nebula--a ring of bright gas surrounding a star--was actually composed of huge comets...
Astronomer Nicholas U. Mayall of Lick Observatory, Calif., was taking routine pictures of N.G.C. 6964, a spiral nebula four million light-years away. On one of the plates last week his practiced eye discovered a monstrous star that should not have been there. It was a supernova, an obscure star that had exploded suddenly. When Dr. Mayall photographed it first, its "absolute brilliance" was equal to two million suns. It had probably faded from a peak a few weeks ago of four million suns. If any planets had been revolving around that unstable star, they were certainly vaporized...
...nebula-dotted universe is finite, what lies beyond it? Robertson does not know. Perhaps, he admits, there may exist, far off in some medium that is thinner than space, still other universes. But each, presumably, is sealed in its own bubble of space, the light from its stars circulating endlessly, never escaping to reach our astronomers' telescopes. Scientists, briskly dusting their hands of other universes, say that if they exist, they must be penetrated by "nonphysical means...
...will telephone instructions to an assistant down at the control desk; the massive telescope will swing almost silently. When Hubble is satisfied that it is pointed right, he will put a plate in the holder, watch through a microscope, and make careful minor adjustments while the scattered photons of nebula light (some of which have been traveling for a billion years) make their marks on the photosensitive emulsion...