Ancient supernovas may have pierced moon rocks with star shrapnel
Early astronomers noticed this star detonate in 1572. While any dust it expelled hasn’t had nearly enough time to reach the moon, early explosions could have punched holes in lunar rocks. ( X-ray: NASA/CXC/RIKEN & GSFC/T. Sato et al; Optical: DSS/)Astronomers usually mine starlight for information. Flickers in the light that reaches earth regularly unveil new vignettes of distant systems—such as a muggy alien atmosphere, a pulsating stellar bulge, and a dead star snacking on an ice world.But alien sunbeams are not the only type of interstellar messenger. At least two comet-like objects have made their way to our solar system, and naked cores of atoms rain down upon our heads daily in the form of cosmic rays. Now, in a not-yet-peer-reviewed preprint, two researchers are proposing that signs of another cosmic connection could lie undetected in labs and museums around the world. Exploding stars could, according to their results,...