Philip Terzian <pterzian@No-Spam> wrote:
>
> Hans Bethe, a theoretical astrophysicist and one of the developers of
> nuclear weapons during WWII, died yesterday.
One of his books, "The Road from Los Alamos", is great reading. The
best part is the essay he wrote describing what happens when a Type II
supernova explodes. It is absolutely riveting.
The best part: The start of the explosion is the collapse of the iron
core into solid neutrons. Basically, this creates a giant hole that
the rest of the star falls into, and when it hits the solid neutron
core, it rebounds, and star explodes into smithereens.
Received on Mon Mar 7 14:33:23 2005