“Extraterrestrial Cause for the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction,” by physicist Luis Alvarez, geologist Walter Alvarez, Frank Asaro, and Helen Michel, was published in Science June 6, 1980. In it, the authors propose that an asteroid crashing to Earth was responsible for the death of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. (The timeline was later amended to 66Continue reading "June 6, 1980: The asteroid impact theory"

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Looking for a sky event this week? Check out our full Sky This Week column.  June 5: Check in on Mars Look east around 11 P.M. local daylight time, and you’ll see three bright stars forming a triangle — this is the famous Summer Triangle asterism, which flies high overhead in the middle of short summer nights.Continue reading "The Sky Today on Saturday, June 6: Albireo returns"

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Carl Parnell, taken from Dawlish, Devon, UK The Jellyfish Nebula (IC 443 or Sharpless 2–248) is the remnant of a supernova that went off some 30,000 years ago in Gemini. Filling the top half of the image is a glowing molecular complex threaded by multiple dark nebula (LDN 1565–8). The supernova debris plowing into thisContinue reading "Sky nettle"

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