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Article: Seeing supernovas in galactic 'chimneys.'
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- September 1, 1990
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1990 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Seeing supernovas in galactic 'chimneys'
Recent theories hold that clusters of hundreds to thousands of exploding stars, or supernovas, hurl fountains or cannonballs of gas and dust out of the disks of spiral galaxies. Such expulsions would affect the galaxy's shape and ratation speed, while redistributing its chemical elements (SN: 11/11/89, p.310). In the "chimney" theory, barrages of supernovas go off like dynamite explosions at a construction site, blasting steep-sided pits that pockmark the interstellar medium of gas and dust forming the galactic disk.
Now, astonomers present the first observational indication of these supernova-containing galactic ...