Word: cloud
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...family actually extends far beyond either of these two planets. Out there in the frigid darkness beyond any known planet, they believe, lies the Kuiper belt, a ring of dusty ice chunks that surrounds the solar system. Beyond that, astronomers say, is the similarly composed Oort cloud, which forms a vast sphere around our planetary system. The cloud stretches two light-years from the sun, halfway to Alpha Centauri, the next nearest star. Occasionally one of the icy lumps in these outer regions is nudged toward the sun by a passing star or gas cloud. As it falls toward...
...puts it at more than 5.1 billion km (3.2 billion miles) away. That doesn't necessarily make it the most remote object in the solar system, since Pluto retreats to more than 7 billion km from the sun. But it does imply that the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud really exist and that the solar system's boundary may lie 10,000 times as far away as Pluto ever ventures...
There were already several reasons to think the latter is true. For one thing, the existence of the belt and cloud are natural consequences of established theories about the birth of the solar system. According to such theories, the early sun, formed from a cloud of gas and dust, was surrounded by a disk-shaped nimbus made up of the leftovers. The newborn star's heat drove smaller particles and gases, including water vapor, out from the center. The heavier, metal-rich rock left behind condensed into asteroids and the inner planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. Much...
...MARY LOUISE KELLY '93 ASSISTANT NIGHT EDITOR: D. RICHARD DE SILVA '94 STORY EDITORS: D. RICHARD DE SILVA '94 BRIAN D. ELLISON '95 LAN N. NGUYEN '93 MAGGIE S. TUCKER '93 JOANNA M. WEISS '94 PHOTO EDITOR: HAU LIU '94 SPORTS EDITOR: JAY K. VARMA '93 EDITORIAL: JOHN A. CLOUD '93 BUSINESS EDITOR: SAMEER A. CHISHTY '93 YOUNG...
Washington: Stanley W. Cloud, Margaret Carlson, Ann Blackman, Michael Duffy, Dan Goodgame, Ted Gup, S.C. Gwynne, Julie Johnson, J.F.O. McAllister, Jay Peterzell, Elaine Shannon, Dick Thompson, Nancy Traver Boston: Sam Allis Chicago: Jon D. Hull, Elizabeth Taylor Detroit: William McWhirter Atlanta: Michael Riley Houston: Richard Woodbury Miami: Cathy Booth Los Angeles: Jordan Bonfante, Jeanne McDowell, Sylvester Monroe, James Willwerth, Sally B. Donnelly San Francisco: David S. Jackson...