Word: cosmically
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...might solo into outer space. Airman Farrell, 23, Manhattan-born son of a Wall Street accountant, was to make a seven-day simulated trip to the moon and back. Though he would not be exposed to three of the major hazards of space flight-acceleration, weightlessness and cosmic rays-the Air Force's space medicinemen wanted to study his reactions, both physical and emotional, to confinement* and fatigue...
...weeks the supernova gives as much light as 200 million suns. The Russian astronomers do not think that a brief burst of light from a supernova 26 light-years away would have much effect on the earth. Much more serious, they think, would be the vast amount of cosmic rays streaming out of the wreckage of the shattered star. For a few hundred or thousand years after the explosion, the number of cosmic rays hitting the earth would be many times greater than it is today...
Siege of Rays. Cosmic rays are held responsible for many of the genetic mutations that make sudden changes in the heredity of plants and animals. So if cosmic rays increase because of a nearby supernova, mutations will probably increase in proportion. Since most mutations are harmful or even deadly, the effects on some forms of life might be disastrous...
Long-lived animals would suffer most because their reproductive tissue would accumulate damage over a long period. Their mutation rate might be doubled, think Krasovsky and Shklovsky, if cosmic rays were stepped up by three to ten times the present number. They might accumulate enough harmful mutations to destroy the species...
...Cosmic Casanova, an intergalactic lover boy tunes in a cute pinup on his rocketship TV screen. He makes an unscheduled landing on her tiny home planet, only to be disappointed when the hatch door opens. The girl turns out to be a giantess, and "I'd have looked like such a fool, standing there on tiptoe with my arms wrapped around her knees...