Word: cosmically
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What's frightening is that these discoveries make it clear how little astronomers know about planets, and they add to the dawning realization that our solar system--and by implication Planet Earth--may be a cosmic oddball. For years theorists figured that other stars would have planets more or less like the ones going around the sun. But starting with the 1995 discovery of the first extrasolar planet--a gassy monster like Jupiter but orbiting seven times as close to its star as Mercury orbits around our sun--each new find has seemed stranger than the last. Searchers have found...
...third suggestion, the Overpowering Assumption, I think is best. But not for the reasons he suggests—that the assumption is so cosmic that it might be accepted. It is rarely “accepted;” we aren’t here to accept or reject—we’re here to be amused. The more dazzling, personal, unorthodox, paradoxical your assumptions (paradoxes are not equivocations), the more interesting an essay is likely to be. (If you have a chance to confer with the assistant in advance, of course—and we all like...
There is a third method of dealing with examination questions—that is by the use of an overpowering assumption, an assumption so cosmic that it is sometimes accepted. For example, we wrote that is was pretty obvious that the vague generality was the key device in any discussion of examination writing. Why is it obvious? As a matter of fact, it wasn’t obvious at all, but just an arbitrary point form which to start. His is an example of an unwarranted assumption...
...archeological project, the organization has linked several hundred amateurs with a team of professional archeologists excavating in the San Diego area. In another project, members measured muon flux--particles produced in the upper atmosphere when cosmic rays collide with molecules in the air--with Forrest Mims III, the legendary author of the Radio Shack Mini Notebooks electronics series...
...vehicle for transport to the stars: the Hayden Planetarium, centerpiece of the $210 million Rose Center for Earth and Space. The 87-foot aluminum sphere that is the Hayden's core seemed to float inside a 10-story glass-walled cube, which is the Hayden's outer shell. "A cosmic cathedral," was how architect James Polshek proudly described his creation. A planetarium is, of course, only a transmitter of outer space to those of us on terra firma. By contrast, the new space station, a U.S.-led international effort that has already cost some $60 billion...