Word: comets
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...three physical science critiques offered of Velikovsky's cosmic conception that appear in the book, Sagan's is the most accessible to the non-scientist. Sagan uses basic physical and chemical theory to attack the ideas of repeated planetary collisions and of the involvement of a comet in the stopping of the earth's rotation (along with the falling of manna from Heaven). He concludes, "To rescue the hypothesis requires special pleading, the vague invention of new physics, and selective inattention to a plethora of conflicting evidence...
...Technology. Though he is the author of some two dozen scientific papers, he has neither a Ph.D. nor a coterie of doting graduate students. What Kowal, 37, does have is a discerning eye and an insatiable appetite for scanning the sky. During the past decade, he has discovered one comet and five more that had somehow been "lost" as well as the 13th-and what may prove to be the 14th-moon of Jupiter, and 80 supernovas, or exploding stars. Last week Kowal announced an even more remarkable sighting: a small, faint object orbiting the sun between Saturn and Uranus...
...possible icy composition of Object-Kowal, which astronomers have deduced based on the amount of light it reflects, suggests that it may be a comet, Kowal said yesterday. He added, however, he thinks it is too big and smooth to be a comet...
Marsden said, however, "It could be a peculiar kind of comet." He added he could not reject the possibility that it is a comet, because of a theory postulated in the '50s that comets could originate in the vicinity of Uranus and Neptune...
...Eric J. Chaison, assistant professor of Astronomy, said yesterday, "The fact that we haven't seen it yet implies that it has just appeared in the solar system, like a comet...