Word: asteroidal
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...Spahr's workday wasn't nearly over. It also triggered a debate among astronomers about how quickly the public should be informed about dangers from space--and how sure scientists need to be before issuing such warnings. Several times in the past, sky watchers have announced that a rogue asteroid might threaten Earth--triggering the usual banner headlines--only to retract the warning a few days later. But while saying "never mind" is embarrassing, it would be much worse to keep a real danger quiet. And that's why Spahr's drawn-out workday was a prime topic of discussion...
When the German amateur posted an alert on an asteroid watchers e-mail list, astronomers around the world went into high gear. "By the time I got home at around midnight," says Spahr, "there were five messages waiting on my answering machine." Over the next several hours, he and others raced to try to figure out whether Earth truly was in danger. "All of us were initially very skeptical," says Clark Chapman, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. "We thought it was a mistake or bad data or someone playing a trick...
...that Europe is in the space game to stay. It will be at least a decade before ESA can put Rosetta to the test. The spacecraft will make a 10-year journey to Jupiter, the first time a craft has traveled, relying only on solar-cell power, beyond the asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter. Once near the giant planet, Rosetta will attempt to land on Comet 67P, one of the dirty flying snowballs that may well be the most primitive objects in the solar system. Scientists believe comets like 67P may contain chemical and physical records from...
...tough talk (Duvall to three interlopers: "One twitch, and you're in hell") or laconic wit (Costner as he spots a few other folks: "Country's fillin' up"). They make a terrific pair of knights errant, or maybe bachelor dinosaurs, enjoying themselves on the Western plain right before the asteroid hits...
...recorded opening date was May 25, 1977, but the thundering hooves of asteroid arrival and Death Star intervention had started many days before. It wasn't like a movie opening; it was like an earthquake. Each day that got closer to the film's release, a signal went out: a high-pitched dog whistle, not audible to the human ear but heard by sci-fi geeks everywhere, generating an excitement in the atmosphere like electricity. It crackled around the theaters. It hummed above my head. I don't know how it started; all I know is that suddenly...