Word: supernovae
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...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...
Another theory is that supernovae did the dinosaurs in. During the last thousand years, say Astronomers V.I. Krasovsky and I.S. Shklovsky of the Soviet Union, at least five supernovae (exploding stars) have been visible from the earth. Starting with this information, they calculate that every 200 million years or so a supernova explodes not more than 26 light-years (156 trillion miles) away from the earth...
...explosion is quite an event; for a couple of weeks the supernova gives as much light as 200 million suns. The Russian astronomers do not think that a brief burst of light from a supernova 26 light-years away would have much effect on the earth. Much more serious, they think, would be the vast amount of cosmic rays streaming out of the wreckage of the shattered star. For a few hundred or thousand years after the explosion, the number of cosmic rays hitting the earth would be many times greater than it is today...
Siege of Rays. Cosmic rays are held responsible for many of the genetic mutations that make sudden changes in the heredity of plants and animals. So if cosmic rays increase because of a nearby supernova, mutations will probably increase in proportion. Since most mutations are harmful or even deadly, the effects on some forms of life might be disastrous...
...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...