Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Fertilizer from the stars

Could a gamma-ray burst have provided nutrients for early plants?
article in Nature by Philip Ball.


Twin beams of gamma rays are thought to burst from the supernovae of giant stars. Click here to see the animation.

The explosion of a star in our cosmic neighbourhood may not sound like good news for life on Earth. But a team of US researchers says that just such a catastrophe could have showered our planet with fertilizer that helped plants to colonize the land about 440 million years ago

a previous Gamma-ray burst post

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