Word: cosmic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...power and allure of the space program, it seems to me, come from its connection with that giddy sense of the unknown. When we explore the universe, we explore ourselves. We seek the source of the cosmic-ray winds that mutate our genes and the comet showers that may periodically extinguish species; we seek the name of that star whose dust is under our fingernails. There is plenty of science in the space program, but the space program is not science; there is technological fallout, but it's not about technology. It's about, or should be about, consciousness...
...dash from the television to the bathroom? Step inside, put a quarter in the Xenophobe game so they can't tell you the rest rooms are for patrons only, then stride to the back, there to be greeted by this sign: 'SORRY!' NO RESTROOMS. Punctuation courtesy of the cosmic joker...
...they lack directional signs and so lead the uninitiated to an underground garage. Back up one flight, through a vast, empty room, into another room containing only a security desk (unattended), just in time to see the ostensibly broken elevator arrive (let's call it Kira's law: cosmic jokers all come out when you need a rest room). The stalls in the men's room have no doors, half the lights are out, and there are too many people hanging around doing nothing in particular. Upstairs, the guards explain that the men's room is a favorite spot...
...astronomers, remote galaxies are cosmic Rosetta stones. Because their faint glimmers of light take billions of years to reach earth, these galaxies -- conglomerations of stars, dust, gas and, perhaps, planets -- offer a unique glimpse far back into time and provide clues to the age of the universe. As Physicist Stephen Hawking has observed: "When we look at the universe, we are seeing it as it was in the past." In those galactic outer reaches, too, lies hidden the answer to a tantalizing mystery: How soon after the cataclysmic fireball of the big bang, from which the universe presumably emerged...
...near Tucson, appearing as a faint, fuzzy object. A computer-enhanced photograph shows the galaxy as a brightly colored, amoeba-shaped mass. Next, the scientists determined the distance of the galaxy by taking an optical spectrum that revealed what one team member, Kenneth Chambers of Johns Hopkins University, calls cosmic fingerprints -- emission lines with sharp features characteristic of hydrogen and carbon. In distant galaxies, these lines occur at much redder wavelengths than those emitted by the same elements on earth; this so-called red shift, believed to be caused by the expansion of the universe, is what astronomers...