'Rock star' spewed guts after emitting vast pearl necklace The equivalent of a "rock star", having lived a "fast, flashy life and died young" apparently exploded with unimaginable violence in the year 161,000 BC and spewed "guts" across an enormous area. The exploding prehistoric luminary had previously ejected a "string of pearls", according to investigating boffins. The 'String of …
Do you have to use stupid words like dumb?
See what I did there, I turned round your sriticism of a particular word by criticising your use of another word? Aren't I clever and superior?
I think I speak for pretty much every regular Reg reader when I say that we are all sick of hearing people complain about the use of teh word 'boffin'. It's in the English language, so stop being a prude and fuck off.
"Much of the very stuff of ... our own bodies was originally forged from lighter elements during supernova explosions"
Not true. Most carbon is now thought to originate in 'carbon stars', old stars of intermediate mass undergoing the so-called 'asymptotic giant branch' phase of evolution. This carbon is generated from helium by fusion reactions within the star, and is then expelled into interstellar space by 'stellar wind' - not an embarrassment but a boon to future life forms such as us and Lewis.
The chemical symbol for Boron is B.
Sorry. Pedant mode disengaged...
I think the point about 'heavier elements' refers to pretty much everything produced in supernovae. If my (admittedly rather rusty) knowledge of stellar nucleosynthesis holds true, although elements up to iron can be produced in larger stars by exoenergetic fusion, anything heavier requires energy input to synthesise the nucleons. This isn't to say that lighter elements aren't produced in supernovae, and IIRC, the majority of anything heavier than carbon is made this way, so whilst there may have been big stars producing the carbon that eventually made up a part of our bodies, virtually all of the nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, magnesium, zinc, iodine etc. etc. that makes up 72% (IIRC that counts as a majority) of what we are would have come from supernovae.
http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howthingswork/f/blbodyelements.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNO_cycle
... I recall, as a pre-boffin, helping (in some appropriately minimal way) to set up the janzos cosmic ray telescope on Black Birch, which was designed to look at sn1987a. I recall that it was quite cold and I carried some moderately heavy things about while others did the real work. Not much of a claim to fame, admittedly :-)
does the pic look like there is a more than passing resemblance with the old grey whistle test there...
it sure looks like theres a rocker in the middle of the ring of pearls.......
frankly im surprised someone hasn't already piped up saying theres the image of Jesus in there...
nuff said im off down the pub for a lemonade
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