Word: centauris
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...planetary systems, some of which may contain worlds inhabited by intelligent life. Yet they have been hard-pressed to prove their case. Interstellar distances are so vast that even the most powerful telescopes on earth could not spot a planet orbiting the sun's nearest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri, which is a relatively scant 4.3 light-years (or about 26 trillion miles) away...
...first astronaut on Mars took that one giant step and then brained his partner with a big red rock, what court could try him? Who could prosecute the hijacker of a spaceship bound for Alpha Centauri? Under current laws of jurisdiction, earthbound courts might be forced to ignore such crimes of the future. Still, new ground is being broken. The case most often cited by jurists trying the first extraterrestrial crime may well be a murder that occurred this summer on a remote Arctic ice island now floating 310 miles from the North Pole...
...epiphany and explanation. Their characters descended slowly, slowly into themselves and then emerged, slimy with some new knowledge, in the last chapter. And in that last chapter they would explain. You see... this makes it all so clear! It wasn't important that the rocketship got to Alpha Centauri after all; what really matters is that we now understand the superego. Or the sex drive. Or our place on the evolutionary ladder. Or whatever...
...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...