Word: cudaback
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Lick Observatory in California disclosed that Pulsar I not only sends out high-frequency radio signals every 1.3 seconds, but also gives off light flashes just about half as often. The conferees were beginning to ponder this new information when a tardy University of California astronomer, David Cudaback, still bleary-eyed from long nights at the Lick Observatory, arrived with word that the light flashes are inexplicably irregular: they speed up or slow down by as much...
Even the finest optical telescope has yet to supply an answer, so Astronomer David D. Cudaback peered beneath the moon's surface with a vastly different type of instrument. Using the 32 dish-shaped antennas of a Stanford University radio telescope, Dr. Cudaback spent three months measuring the moon's own electronic transmissions. He traced the variations in the moon's electrical characteristics, tracked its composition through yards of abstruse equations and decided that its outer surface is just barely denser than the empty space around...
...moon, says Astronomer Cudaback, is probably covered by a thick porous layer that is as light and airy as finespun cotton candy. It is also possible, he says, that there is a foamy crust of crumbly, crackerjack-like material or a lunar honeycomb with cells intact and filled with gas. The moon got that way, he figures, because it has been bombarded with meteors for billions of years. Striking the moon's skin with enough energy to melt 100 times their own mass, the meteors liquefied rock or whatever else they hit, splashing gobs of molten material all over...
...Cudaback's theory may well supply important information for tomorrow's astronauts, but it also intensifies their problems. The moon's frothy covering is sure to complicate the landing technique of any incoming spaceship...
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