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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 24, No. 13. 1961.

4000-Year-Old Cataclysm Observed

4000-Year-Old Cataclysm Observed

Last year astronomers watching the sky in the region of the constellation of Hercules were eye-witnesses of a catastrophe which occurred four those and years ago. In about 2000 B.C. when the Pharoahs were still in the early days of their power in Ancient Egypt, a star indescribably distant from Earth suddenly exploded into what is called a Nova.

In a few short months the conflagration generated as much energy as 100,000 of our Suns would do in a year. The upper layers of the star burst away from it in the cataclysm, travelling Out wards through space at the speed of well over a thousand miles a second The light of that flare-up, travelling through space for 4,000 years before it reached Earth, finally arrived last year, showing up in the telescopes as a faint "new" star in Hercules.