Word: caltech
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...confirm relativity but also to probe deeply into the most violent processes in the cosmos, including ) exploding supernovas, collisions between black holes, and "starquakes" on the semisolid surfaces of neutron stars. All of these phenomena are believed to send out characteristic bursts of gravity waves. Says Rochus Vogt, the Caltech physics professor who heads the joint M.I.T.-Caltech team that will build LIGO: "We are going to look at a whole new force as a transmitter of signals from the universe. That is bound to bring big surprises...
Meeting them is a humbling experience. Mike Chou, 20, spoke little English when his family arrived in the U.S. from Taiwan in 1983. A Caltech physics major with a 4.1 grade-point average, he has already done pioneering research on solar flares. John Unger II, 21, a mechanical/ biomedical-engineering major at West Virginia University, spent the summer of 1989 in Hong Kong, helping Vietnamese refugees emigrate to the U.S. In September he leaves for India, where he will assist Mother Teresa. He plans to become a doctor and work in the Third World. Says he: "The best part about...
...that deliberately diluted Latino voting strength by splitting the county's then 2 million Hispanics among three districts. The board, charges A.C.L.U. attorney Mark Rosenbaum, is "the most powerful and enduring all- whites club of local government ever in this nation." J. Morgan Kousser, a political-science professor at Caltech, testified that "it was not possible to protect five Anglo incumbents without discriminating against the Hispanic population." The steps the board took to exclude Hispanics, he said, closely resemble those used to prevent blacks from voting in the Jim Crow South...
...that theory received a jolt from another astronomical discovery announced this week. Scientists from Caltech, Princeton and the Institute for Advanced Study have detected the most distant quasar (an exceptionally bright starlike object) ever spotted. It is billions of light-years away, and the researchers estimate that it existed when the universe was only 7% of its present age. It is hard to explain how a quasar could be formed that early, even under the influence of cold dark matter...
While all that may be true, says Caltech physicist Robert Leighton, "if the sun didn't have a magnetic field, it would be as dull as most nighttime astronomers think it is." What a difference a field makes. Twisted and stretched by both the sun's rotation and its roiling interior, the magnetic lines of force orchestrate the intriguing solar cycle...