I. Marks & Spencer

Dear Sir: I have many items purchased at Marks & Spencer by my peripatetic businessman father, including some beautiful clothes and a fold-up umbrella. Ah, the umbrella! It has never broken, inverted, failed to open or been mislaid without being recognised as mine and returned to me. Having had it for about four years, I call that unusual life span a testimony to British ingenuity.

If Mrs. Thatcher ever decides to hand over the government to Marks & Spencer, I may emigrate and change my nationality. Or maybe we could import some M&S managers to run our government!

Barbara Pilvin Philadelphia

 

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In February 1987, the real thing happened. A star much larger and much hotter than our sun reached the end of its conventional life. In its core, hydrogen in quantities equal to about six times the mass of the sun had been converted to helium in hellish thermonuclear reactions. Helium in turn had fused into carbon and oxygen, which themselves fused into even heavier elements. Eventually the innermost section of the core, about half again as massive as the sun, was turned into almost pure iron. The star was running out of available reactions, and activity in the core slackened. Now the radiation pouring outward was no longer as strong as the gravitational force pulling inward; the star collapsed, falling inward on itself until it could give no more, and exploded, spewing radiation and most of its mass into space. For astronomers, the supernova (known as Supernova 1987A, or SN1987A for short) was — and is — the story of the century.

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