Word: comets
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...lunar eclipses are found in the inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells of the Shang Dynasty over 3,000 years ago. In the 2,100 years from the Qin Dynasty to the late Qing Dynasty (that is, from 221 B.C. to 1911), the 27 appearances of Halley's Comet were all recorded in China. Zhang Heng, of the Han Dynasty, invented a seismograph to determine the location of earthquakes, and the celestial globe that showed the movement of the sun, moon and other stars. Mathematicians in the pre-Qin days put forward the proposition known as the Pythagorean theorem...
DIED. EUGENE SHOEMAKER, 69, vigilant planetary geologist who spent a lifetime tracking the comets he believed posed a threat to life on Earth; in a car accident; near Alice Springs, Australia. Shoemaker co-discovered the comet that smashed into Jupiter in July 1994, creating dazzling fireworks for stargazers...
Other hoped-for missions include a 13-year, 4 billion-mile-plus journey to Pluto and its companion moon Charon, tentatively set to launch in 2001; a comet-rendezvous mission that will take off in February 1999, fly by Comet Wild 2 in 2004 and fly back home with a bit of material from its diaphanous tail; and perhaps even a much-dreamed-of journey to Neptune's planet-size moon Triton. Says Goldin: "We're going to have the most aggressive exploration of our own solar system in the history of the human species...
NASA may have the "vomit comet" to brace astronauts for space flight. But if you're looking for a real stomach-turning ride, try Wall Street. In a seven-week trip, the Dow Jones industrial average plunged nearly 700 points from mid-March to mid-April, only to suddenly turn full-throttle upward. In one of the dizziest weeks of the year, the Dow closed up 332.22 points to a near record...
...astronaut and new-paradigm scientist, I was a guest on Art Bell's radio talk show [NATION, April 14] on Feb. 16. To Bell's credit, I had the opportunity to make very clear that I saw absolutely no scientific evidence for any spaceship companion to the Hale-Bopp comet. But I also cited positive evidence for the presence of extraterrestrial intelligence through the UFO phenomenon. It is easy to use the Heaven's Gate tragedy to debunk the entire range of phenomena associated with possible visitations, ignoring government cover-ups of reverse engineering and of radical new concepts...