Word: asteroidal
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...extinction of the dinosaurs has long been considered a crime committed by a lone gunman: an incoming asteroid that struck the earth 65 million years ago, filling the air with sun-blocking dust. Now, however, controversy is being stirred anew as evidence suggests that the asteroid might have had a partner in crime: volcanoes, massive ones, blasting clouds of toxic gas from the bowels of the earth and poisoning much of the planet's life...
COSMIC COLLISION An asteroid 106 miles in diameter ran into a 37-mile asteroid 160 million years ago at a speed of 1.89 miles per sec., creating an asteroid set called the Baptistina family...
...duck of a spacecraft, scheduled to launch in September, is known simply as Dawn, and its destinations are the asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres, mysterious bodies orbiting in the belt of rubble that circles the sun between Mars and Venus. NASA vehicles have been this way before, but they've usually been just passing through on their way to the planets in the outer solar system. This time the asteroid belt itself will be the destination, and the ship will get there courtesy of the young technology of ion propulsion...
...selling music for years without DRM, in a form you may have heard of called the compact disc. CDs have never had DRM attached. Off the record, most executives--on the technology side at least--will tell you that DRM is a dinosaur that's waiting for the asteroid to hit. It's just a matter of when the music industry will stop assuming its customers are all criminals...
...course, what exactly to do about a Harvard Square-sized boulder bearing down on earth is an entirely different challenge. Currently, there are several hypothetical options, which fall into two broad categories. One, give the asteroid a very gentle nudge away from the earth. This could be accomplished either with a tiny rocket attached to the side of the asteroid or by a minute gravitational tug from a nearby spaceship. Two, detonate a nuclear bomb next to the asteroid, vaporizing one side of it, and sending it careening in another direction. Either option requires a good deal of advance notice...