Star Suicide

Novae are stars which, in making some obscure internal adjustment, flare up suddenly from sub-visibility, shine brilliantly for days, weeks or months, subside at last into their former faintness. Conspicuous as any stars in the sky at the peak of their display, they are spectacular but not rare, for nearly 40 have been observed since 1900. But the universe has superlatives. Once in a while a super-nova emerges grandiosely on the cosmic stage.

Last May Mt. Wilson Observatory's Walter Baade and Caltech's Fritz Zwicky called the matter of supernovae to the attention of the National Academy of Sciences. Last week, in The Physical Review, they brought out further details. They are inclined to believe supernovae explode so violently that they cease to exist as ordinary stars. On the surface protons and electrons coalesce into neutrons; the neutrons "rain" down toward the centre of gravity and, having no repellent electrical charges, pack close together. End product is a "neutron star"--a small, dead, enormously dense lump of matter.

First recorded super-nova was observed in the Milky Way in 1572. It was visible in full daylight. Another appeared in Andromeda in 1885. Since 1900 about a dozen have been found by chance on photographic plates, mostly in the Virgo cluster of nebulae. Drs. Baade & Zwicky estimate that each galaxy has one super-nova every thousand years. The average nebula contains a billion stars. If one star committed suicide in the super-nova manner every 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.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.