It is still held by a few astronomers that
such a cataclysm means that two stars collided. Even a partial or
"grazing " collision between two masses, each weighing billions
of tons, travelling (on the average) forty or fifty miles a
second--a movement that would increase enormously as they
approach each other--would certainly liquefy or vaporise their
substance; but the astronomer, accustomed to see cosmic bodies
escape each other by increasing their speed, is generally
disinclined to believe in collisions. Some have made the new star
plunge into the heart of a dense and dark nebula; some have
imagined a shock of two gigantic swarms of meteors; some have
regarded the outflame as the effect of a prodigious explosion. In
one or other new star each or any of these things may have
occurred, but the most plausible and accepted theory for the new
star of 1901 and some others is that two stars had approached
each other too closely in their wandering. Suppose that, in
millions of years to come, when our sun is extinct and a firm
crust surrounds the great molten ball, some other sun approaches
within a few million miles of it. The two would rush past each
other at a terrific speed, but the gravitational effect of the
approaching star would tear open the solid shell of the sun, and,
in a mighty flame, its molten and gaseous entrails would be flung
out into space.
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