Word: cosmically
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...next took on the mystery of cosmic structure, why galaxies clump together in huge clusters rather than spread uniformly throughout space. He and a colleague suggested that the reason was knots of warped space-time called "topological defects." The idea was brilliant, but observations proved it quite wrong. Many scientists would have fought to save their pet theory. Spergel cheerfully declared it dead and moved...
...anecdotal evidence of travelers, things are a lot scarier than you thought up there?and it has nothing to do with the dangers spelled out on the safety card in the seat pocket in front of you. The new concerns swirling around air travel concern high levels of cosmic radiation, the questionable quality of the air we breath in cabins, disease-causing microbes and the famously cramped seating that once seemed something to merely peeve about, not die from. Exactly what risks we face when flying is the subject of an increasingly acrimonious debate among airlines, flight attendants' unions, consumer...
...become a legal issue is the worry over cosmic radiation. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, at 12,000 m air travelers are exposed to as much as 265 times the radiation dose they receive on the ground. Some airlines take pregnant female flight attendants off airborne duties to avoid exposing the fetus to cosmic rays. Passengers who make a transpolar journey, like the new direct Hong Kong-New York routes operated by Continental Airlines, United Airlines and, from September, Cathay Pacific, receive on average the equivalent to three chest X rays. (The rays concentrate around the North Pole...
...latest results do hold up, some of the most important questions in cosmology--how old the universe is, what it's made of and how it will end--will have been answered, only about 70 years after they were first posed. By the time the final chapter of cosmic history is written--further in the future than our minds can grasp--humanity, and perhaps even biology, will long since have vanished. Yet it's conceivable that consciousness will survive, perhaps in the form of a disembodied digital intelligence. If so, then someone may still be around to note that...
Remember the young Woody Allen's cosmic angst in the film Annie Hall? Having just read that the universe is expanding, the boy is so worried that he can't do his homework. "Someday it will break apart," he tells his shrink, "and that will be the end of everything." But, his mother snaps, "you're here in Brooklyn! Brooklyn is not expanding...