From California's high, peaceful Mt. Wilson Observatory last week Dr. Fritz Zwicky reported a tremendous celestial cataclysm which happened 3,000,000 years ago. This was a supernova, a star exploding with suicidal violence. So distant was it that long before the first creatures describable as human beings appeared, the light of the supernova's outburst began flashing toward Earth at 186,000 mi. per sec.
Astronomers have not decided what causes stars to explode. Something seems to go wrong with the delicate mechanism that keeps the outward force of radiation pressure balanced against the inward...
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