Word: comets
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...earth's favorite playmates in the lonely vastness of space is the Gia-cobini-Zinner comet, which sweeps around the sun in a lopsided orbit once every six and a half years. In 1933, two sweeps ago, the earth passed within 500,000 miles of the place where the comet had been 80 days before. The result: a gaudy shower of meteors...
...Harvard astronomers circled the Boston heavens last night in a "flying planetarium" to record the effects of the meteor shower from the comet Giscobint-Zinner...
...astronomers also gave assurance that the display would be visible without intruments if weather conditions were good. They indicated that a comet which sails under the name of Giacobini-Zinner is responsible for this affair, and that this body will be only 131,000 miles away from the earth during the next three days...
...quick look at the records showed that only one other solar body has approached as near to this planet, a mere stone's throw in astronomical circles considering that the moon is a little less than twice as far away. The last appearance of this particular comet comparable in proximity occurred...
...comet collision would be a cream-puff blow compared with an encounter between the earth and an asteroid. These small bodies, believed to be pieces of a planet once located between Mars and Jupiter, have highly eccentric orbits and often shoot close to the earth. In 1937 a small asteroid, Hermes, missed the earth by only 500,000 miles - a bare stone's throw as interplanetary space is reckoned...