An illustration of a supernova. Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

Did Exploding Stars Force Humans to Walk Upright?

Robert Roy Britt
4 min readMay 28, 2019

--

Some scientific ideas are far-fetched. This one is way out there. About 163 light-years, to be specific.

A spate of exploding stars is thought to have bathed Earth in excess cosmic rays that peaked about 2.6 million years ago. That much is known. Here’s where things get speculative: The outburst created “an avalanche of electrons in the lower atmosphere” that sparked “an…

--

--

Robert Roy Britt

Editor of Aha! and Wise & Well on Medium + the Writer's Guide at writersguide.substack.com. Author of Make Sleep Your Superpower: amazon.com/dp/B0BJBYFQCB