Word: asteroidal
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Think small. Now think smaller still. For in the lilliputian wonderland that scientists have begun to explore, a grain of rice looms as large as an asteroid, a droplet of water as wide as an inland...
While NASA studied Magellan's images, another space explorer made history last week. Moving out beyond Mars, Galileo became the first spacecraft to have a close encounter with an asteroid. But pictures of the mysterious planetary fragment, called Gaspra, are unavailable because Galileo's main antenna for sending out images is frozen in the wrong position. Not until 1992, when Galileo swings back by Earth, can smaller antennas on the craft successfully transmit the missing pictures. The frustrating delay makes scientists all the more grateful for Magellan's reliable -- and revealing -- signals from Venus...
Andy is the master story-teller. Inspired by Alcoholics Anonymous, he urges everyone he meets to spill their guts. No one escapes without regurgitating a short story about themselves. The subjects range from supermarket apocalypses to tales of Texlahoma, an asteroid orbiting earth where it is perpetually...
...Alvarezes analyzed this clay in the late 1970s and showed it had a far higher content of the rare element iridium than ordinarily found in the earth's crust. It was this discovery that led Luis Alvarez to his momentous - insight. Comets and asteroids have high iridium content, he reasoned, and the clay layer could have been formed by the worldwide fallout of the material vaporized when an errant asteroid or, as most scientists now suspect, a giant comet smacked into the earth...
Until the space age, earthlings had no defense against such a threat. But now astronomers can determine years in advance if an asteroid will hit the earth. In theory, a nuclear missile could then be launched to rendezvous with the intruder, explode nearby and nudge it into a safe path. NASA, which spends under $1 million a year watching for collisions, will be a sponsor of the first International Conference on Near-Earth Asteroids next week in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., and is planning a seminar this year on asteroid avoidance. Still, the threat of a sneak attack remains...