Word: asteroidal
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...early sun, formed from a cloud of gas and dust, was surrounded by a disk-shaped nimbus made up of the leftovers. The newborn star's heat drove smaller particles and gases, including water vapor, out from the center. The heavier, metal-rich rock left behind condensed into asteroids and the inner planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. Much of the gas and light dust , farther out was gathered up into the so-called gas giants: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The rest was blown by solar heat and wind to the outskirts, where it presumably congealed into chunks...
...study the planet Jupiter, the Galileo probe passed within 5,300 km (3,300 miles) of the asteroid 951 Gaspra, and scientists instructed it to take the first closeup ever of such an object. The irregular shape suggests that Gaspra was chipped from a larger body in a mammoth collision. (See related story on page...
...comet or an asteroid strike about 65 million years ago is the favored explanation for why dinosaurs vanished from the earth so abruptly after having dominated the planet for the preceding 70 million years. The tremendous plume of smoke and dust thrown into the atmosphere by the space intruder's impact, equivalent to perhaps a million hydrogen bombs, would have blocked out sunlight for months. The globe would have gone into a dark, deep freeze, killing first the plants and then the giant lizards that fed on them, directly or indirectly -- paving the way for mammals, and eventually humans...
...report in Science suggests that 370 million years ago, during the Late Devonian period, a comet or asteroid caused an even greater catastrophe, one that wiped out fully 70% of all marine species on earth. American and Belgian scientists have found tiny glass beads just .3 mm (.004 in.) across, embedded in underground sediments in Belgium. The beads, called microtektites, are thought to be caused when silicon and other minerals melt and then cool following either a volcanic eruption or a high-speed impact. The chemical composition of these beads seems to point much more convincingly to an impact...
...that the threat of a nuclear war with Moscow is fading, atomic-weapons designers have been casting around for a mission. Some of them -- including physicist Edward Teller, the father of the H-bomb -- have proposed using a Super Nuke to destroy a huge asteroid that could extinguish human life if it crashed into Earth...