Extreme Explosions Supernovae Hypernovae Magnetars And Other Unusual Cosmic Blasts David S Stevenson by David S. Stevenson 9781461481355, 146148135X instant download after payment.

What happens at the end of the life of7ه massive stars? At one time we thought all these stars followed similar evolutionary paths. However, new discoveries have shown that things are not quite that simple. This book focuses on the extreme –the most intense, brilliant and peculiar– of astronomical explosions. It features highly significant observational finds that push the frontiers of astronomy and astrophysics, particularly as before these objects were only predicted in theory. This book is for those who want the latest information and ideas about the most dramatic and unusual explosions detected by current supernova searches. It examines and explains cataclysmic and unusual events in stellar astrophysics and presents them in a non-mathematical but highly detailed way that non-professionals can understand and enjoy.Preface
Although I was perhaps only 6 or 7 years old at the time, I remember
my dad taking me out on cold winter evenings, pointing out the
constellations as we walked slowly up the frost-glazed road. This
was suburban Glasgow, then a city of one million people, and there
was relatively less light pollution and many thousands of stars
that were visible. I was immediately intrigued by the differences
in brightness and colors of the stars, as much as I was about their
twinkling effervescence. Even from a city as big as Glasgow, the
sheer beauty of space never failed to amaze me.
I suppose it was my dad’s enthusiasm for a night sky – a love
born during his time on HMS Orion in the First World War – that
really pushed me in this direction. By eight, I had developed an
unhealthy love of explosions. Early on my main area of explosive
interest, aside from James Bond movies, was volcanoes. However,
once I knew that entire stars could blow themselves to pieces, I
was never really going to look back. At eight, I had my fi rst book
on stars, and even though it was soon chewed to pieces by my pet
hamster, it was still heavily thumbed in search of facts about why
something as
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