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English, 12.06.2020 05:57 dollar6219

Consider the following passage: SAN FRANCISCO, Ca. — Traces of a rare element found in Antarctic and Greenland ice suggest a nearby star blew up 35,000 years ago, zapping the Earth with radiation that could have speeded evolution, a researcher said yesterday. The supernova was located in our own galaxy only 150 light years, or 880 trillion miles, from Earth. That is closer than any other known exploding star, said astrophysicist Grant E. Kocharov, vice chairman of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Cosmic Ray Council. By comparison, a 1987 supernova that was the closest exploding star seen by scientists in 400 years was 1,000 times more distant and located in another galaxy entirely.

When stars explode as supernovas, the incredible blasts produce a wide variety of radiation, including powerful cosmic rays, which continually strike the entire Earth. When cosmic rays enter Earth's atmosphere over the poles, they can smash into nitrogen and oxygen molecules and produce beryllium-10, a metallic element that then falls from the atmosphere and is incorporated in the polar ice sheets.

Kocharov drilled ice cores at the Dye 3 and Camp Century research stations in Greenland and the Vostok, Byrd, and Dome C stations in Antarctica. He found the amount of beryllium-10 was doubled in ice that formed 35,000 years ago, at what is now about 2,000 feet below the surface. This indicates that a powerful supernova exploded nearby about 35,000 years ago, doubling the cosmic radiation bombarding Earth, Kocharov said during the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting. Furthermore, supernova remnants of about the same age are still detectable in space, suggesting they and the increased cosmic rays came from an exploding star 150 light years away, he added. Cosmic rays are so energetic they can break chemical bonds in living cells, causing cancer and mutations.

I think a reasonable bare bones paraphrase of the substance of the passage would be something like:

Based on chemical analysis of polar ice, it seems there was a supernova close to Earth about 35,000 years ago.

Given this bare bones paraphrase, you can see I omitted some detail I thought dispensable. Select any of the following that I've implicitly categorized as dispensable detail.

Question options:

That the next closest supernova scientists had known about was 1,000 times more distant than this one

That the rare element was beryllium-10

That the supernova was located in our galaxy about 150 light years away

That beryllium-10 is produced when cosmic rays enter Earth's atmosphere and smash into nitrogen and oxygen molecules

That the researcher was Grant E. Kocharov of the Russian Academy of Sciences

That the amount of beryllium-10 was doubled in ice formed 35,000 years ago

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Consider the following passage: SAN FRANCISCO, Ca. — Traces of a rare element found in Antarctic an...
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