Word: supernova
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...tween the stars. But though this theory serves well enough for ordinary rays, the Milky Way galaxy to which the sun and its planets belong lacks magnetism strong enough to load 10²° electron-volts on a lone proton. Nothing else in the galaxy, such as an exploding supernova, could do the job either...
...attraction. The astronomers' keenest interest is focused on much more distant space, from which the waves bring news of strange occurrences. The third strongest single source in the sky is a famous astronomical object, the Crab Nebula, the turbulent, gaseous wreck of a star that turned into a supernova and blew itself to shreds on July 11, 1054 A.D.-an event that was duly recorded by Chinese astronomers. After 908 years, the Crab's gases are still churning violently, and as the electrons that they contain move through magnetic fields, they still send out a vast amount...
...Nobel Laureate Harold Clayton Urey* proposed a bold new theory that accounts for the formation of the universe and suggests that the moon may be at least 100 million years older than the earth. In the beginning, said Urey. the explosion of a supernova some 5 billion years ago splattered the space around it with cooling cosmic dust. As particles of matter caromed into each other and stuck, moon-sized bodies were formed. These, too, collided with each other and grew into planets. Somehow, the clump of material that men now know as the moon escaped collision and floated free...
...limit of intelligence may show itself, says Astronomer Struve, in another and more spectacular way. Every few hundred years, throughout the galaxy, a supernova (exploding star) blows up with a mighty detonation. Astronomers generally credit these events to natural causes. But, says Struve, "it is perfectly conceivable that some intelligent race meddled once too often with nuclear laws and blew themselves to bits." When astronomers on the earth are able to observe such explosions with sufficient accuracy, they'may be able to determine which ones were natural and which were caused by beings that grew too intelligent for their...
...scientists suggest that a few centuries of intense cosmic rays from an exploding star may have killed them off. Small, fast-breeding animals, such as the primitive, ratlike mammals of the time, would not be damaged as much. So the mammals survived the siege of cosmic rays. After the supernova had died down, some evolved into forms almost as big as the dinosaurs...