Word: supernova
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Thank you for your letter of Sept. 9 with the enclosed copy of TIME'S Sept. 13 issue describing the new supernova. Everything in the article is straight except two points to which I call your attention for possible future occasion...
...Wilson can claim many fundamental discoveries, but not the new supernova, which was first photographed with the 18-in. Schmidt telescope of the California Institute of Technology on Palomar Mountain, future site of the 200-in. telescope now under construction...
From California's high, peaceful Mt. Wilson Observatory last week Dr. Fritz Zwicky reported a tremendous celestial cataclysm which happened 3,000,000 years ago. This was a supernova, a star exploding with suicidal violence. So distant was it that long before the first creatures describable as human beings appeared, the light of the supernova's outburst began flashing toward Earth...
...Supernovae are millions of times brighter than the sun-usually shedding more light than the millions of other stars in their nebula. About 15 have been recorded. Three years ago Dr. Zwicky, distinguished young Bulgarian-born astrophysicist who believes exploding stars may be a source of cosmic rays, brought the matter of supernovae to the attention of the National Academy of Sciences. He said then that supernovae probably cease to exist as ordinary stars; that protons and electrons coalesce on the surface into neutrons which, having no electric charges to repel one another, "rain" down toward the centre, pack sluggishly...
...giant star, sailing through the sea of space, were a battleship a million miles from stem to stern, and some spark set off its powder magazine, the result would be something like what happens when a star explodes as a supernova. Supernovae are the mightiest celestial cataclysms known to man. Last week astronomers at Mt. Wilson Observatory in California reported discovery and observation of a super-nova in the distant island universe NGC 4273. Although about a dozen supernovae have been found by chance on photographic plates, the one announced last week was the first since 1901 to be watched...