Word: supernova
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...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...
...thousand years, the nebula would be exhausted in one trillion years?which happens to be the figure commonly set by astrophysicists as the minimum life span of stars. Thus Drs. Baade & Zwicky hold it not unlikely that soon or late every star is destined to burst forth as a supernova. If they are right the old concept of the end of the world?life freezing to death under a cooling sun? must give way to the prospect of life scorched to death by a sun having its final fling before joining the stellar ghosts in the cosmic graveyard...