Word: cometed
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...Leonid meteor storm -- and while stargazers across the globe settle down for a romantic cascade of shooting stars, scientists and corporations scramble to save their satellites from the biggest Earth-bound bombardment the space age has ever seen. As you read this, tiny fragments from the Comet Tempel-Tuttle's tail are whizzing toward our unsuspecting planet at a dizzying 155,000 mph. You, of course, are protected by many miles of flammable, oxygen-rich atmosphere. The satellite your pager uses -- not to mention your phone company, your cable company and your government -- isn't so lucky. Our entire orbital...
...Leonids, so named because they seem to radiate from the constellation Leo, are actually debris shed by comet Tempel-Tuttle. In an elongated, 33-year orbit of the sun, the comet travels as far out as Uranus, then back to within 91 million miles of the solar surface, passing close to Earth's orbit on both its way in and its way out. Like other comets, Tempel-Tuttle is, in effect, a dirty snowball that heats up as it approaches the sun and boils off some of its "dirt," which consists largely of particles, some pea size...
These particles, called meteoroids, remain in orbit and gradually disperse along the comet's orbital path, forming a giant, debris-laden stream in space. In its yearly travels around the sun, Earth intersects with or comes close to that stream every November, and sightings of the Leonids have been recorded in texts as far back as A.D. 902. The speeding meteoroids hurtle into Earth's atmosphere, are heated by friction and become blazing meteors that are incinerated in midair...
...Leonid showers are alike, however. As Donald Yeomans, an astronomer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, notes, "Most of the particles are following closely behind the parent comet. That's where the gathering is thickest, and it's only when the comet is in Earth's neighborhood that we get intense showers or storms...
...what of the work? Varnedoe's catalog essay bears the title "Comet: Jackson Pollock's Life and Work," which fits the eclat and brevity of Pollock's appearance. But comets eventually swing back on their orbit and return, whereas Pollock was a singular and not a cyclic event, more like a meteor that plows into the earth and wreaks havoc on its climate, filling art's air with fallout. Artists have been defining themselves and their work against Pollock ever since. Yet most of his influence was indirect. Pollock's mature style--based on dripping and flinging skeins of paint...