Almost all of the radiation, generated by a distant exploding star, was absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere, so at the surface the end result was something less than what humans experience in getting a medical x-ray. Nevertheless, concerned that reporters wouldn't get a good story, scientists starring at NASA's press briefing struggled for the kind of cataclysmic language usually reserved for California earthquakes and nuclear holocausts. When I saw the flash, I knew the wait was over. Robert Duncan, of the University of Texas at Austin, said rapidly spinning neutron stars create a magnetic field far greater than any other known. We were unimpressed.
Any American teenager can do that.
British lepidopterists are finding themselves at odds with the Greens over an observed proliferation of butterflies in Britain. In 1993 thousands of Green protesters tried to stop construction of the M3 highway claiming it would disturb Britain's largest population of chalkhill blue butterflies. A report just released by the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology now says that since building the M3 the butterflies have positively prospered. It turns out that plowing under the old A33 resulted in a net gain of butterfly habitat. Not only are the original two colonies producing in record numbers, but they've been joined by a third breeding colony.