Word: asteroidal
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
That was not the only miscalculation by a candidate who cites chaos theory as a favorite scientific principle. Gore spent the first six months of 1999 surrounded by a virtual asteroid belt of orbiting pollsters, message advisers, family retainers, backseat drivers and policy hangers-on. All wanted a say in campaign strategy, but few were committed enough to give up their day jobs--many of which involved deep, complicated ties to other politicians and corporate interests. Amid all this advice, the one tip Gore might have done well to take came early on from Bill Clinton, who told others that...
...even these storms, it should be noted, would look puny compared with the megastorm of unimaginable destructiveness that scientists have dubbed a "hypercane." Indeed, some meteorologists speculate that a runaway hypercane, triggered by the splashdown of a giant asteroid, may have been instrumental in wiping out the dinosaurs 65 million years...
...eighth or a tenth the diameter of a human hair ?- that they lie beyond the capability of existing technology. Never fear; a researcher in Cambridge, England, is apparently on the verge of developing a highly precise mass spectrometer that might be able to tackle the problem. Until then, NASA asteroid specialist Michael Zolensky and his colleagues will have little to do except wait ?- and collect more evidence. After getting the word out to be extra careful with new meteorite finds (previous discoveries have been tainted by suspicions that they had become contaminated by water from Earth's environment), Zolensky...
Some 117 million miles from Earth last week, a small, unmanned ship named Deep Space 1 swooped to within 10 miles of newly named asteroid Braille. The dramatic encounter marked by far the closest approach ever to an asteroid by a spacecraft and helped validate new and previously untried systems for unmanned spaceflight...
Only one glitch occurred. As DS1 sped past Braille, its camera failed to track the asteroid properly, producing only six tiny and disappointing images shot from 8,700 miles away. But DS1's remote-sensing instruments downloaded streams of data that should reveal much about Braille's composition. Having consumed only 25 lbs. of its original 180 lbs. of xenon fuel, the spacecraft has enough left to intercept and investigate two comets, one burnt out, the other highly active. Appropriately enough, if NASA gives the go-ahead, DS1 would reach those comets in the year...