Word: asteroidal
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Shoemaker-Levy 9 really a comet -- or an asteroid...
...stunning question that may never be answered: Was Shoemaker-Levy 9 really a comet, or was it an asteroid instead? Comets tend to be a mixture of ice, rock and dust, along with substances, like carbon monoxide, that evaporate easily to form a halo and a tail. Scientists studying the chemical composition of the spots on Jupiter where S-L 9 hit thought they might see evidence of water and oxygen, two of the expected products when an icy comet vaporizes. But except for one unconfirmed report,researchers have found only ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and sulfur...
...Asteroids are rockier than comets. Yet it is possible for an asteroid to have a halo or a tail, made mostly of dust. Says Hal Weaver of the Space Telescope Institute: "The only real evidence that ((S-L 9 was)) a comet is that it broke apart, and we've never seen that in an asteroid. But maybe this was a fragile asteroid...
...trillion involved is more than three times the total value of all stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange in a month and twice the size of the nation's gross domestic product. Collectively, these new financial instruments are called derivatives. Financially, they function like some giant unseen asteroid -- they influence the markets' movements with a powerful and dimly understood gravitational pull. And if they wobble out of orbit, they could conceivably come crashing into the sphere of day-to-day investments with cataclysmic effects...
...example is the alleged Israeli-South African nuclear test in the Indian Ocean in 1978, which now is believed to have been an asteroid strike...