Word: centauri
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...event that a civilization exists on some planet orbiting a nearby star, and has been able to detect transmissions from Earth, it is unlikely that any of its saucers have yet arrived to investigate. Even the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.3 light-years away. And because presumably no spaceship-or any matter-can travel at or beyond the velocity of light, which is the universal speed limit according to the Einstein theory of relativity, it would take considerably longer than 4.3 light-years to reach the earth from its nearest stellar neighbor. At the 17,500 m.p.h. that astronauts...
...Step. Study of the southern heavens will provide checkpoints on what scientists have learned in the past several years about X-ray sources in space. It will also yield some of the secrets of spectacular globular star clusters like Omega Centauri, 15,000 light-years from earth. The brightest clusters, including those nearest the earth, can be found only in the southern sky. Since the clusters are believed to contain some of the oldest stars in the Milky Way, they may provide invaluable knowledge regarding the age of the universe...
...Several stars or star clusters showing inexplicably wide deviations in their chemical composition. In some cases, they varied vastly in the amount of lithium and beryllium they contained, and one star (3 Centauri A) contained 100 times more phosphorus than the sun. The discovery poses the still unanswered question: Why do stars have such different contents if, as is generally supposed, they were all formed by similar processes...
...generally loathsome, but now most of them are a good deal more mannerly than human beings. A wry corollary is the now typical story of Earthlings, as far advanced scientifically as they are retarded morally, who burst BEM-like upon the ancient, saintly and helpless squid-creatures of Alpha Centauri...