Word: detectable
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...direction of the constellation Sagittarius, about 21,000 light-years from earth, close to the core of the Milky Way. At that distance, even its home star is invisible, so astronomers resorted to a sort of cosmic optical illusion, first proposed by Einstein in the 1930s, to detect it. Einstein pointed out that since massive objects bend light rays, a star could act as a sort of lens, focusing and magnifying the light of a more distant star passing behind it. In his original paper, Einstein doubted that such a thing would ever be seen- but he didn?t count...
Keeping track of Kim Jong Il on his secret trips outside North Korea is a bit like trying to detect a subatomic particle: proof of his passing can be gleaned only from disturbances in his wake. Witness last week's surge in speculation when Kim was said to be visiting China, stopping in several cities before making his way to Beijing where it was thought?maybe?he might discuss the future of his nuclear-weapons program with Chinese leaders...
...Murderer (Gary Gilmore in The Executioner's Song) and a relentless lawman (Marshall Sam Gerard in The Fugitive). He married Loretta Lynn (Coal Miner's Daughter), saved the world from aliens (Men in Black). But the coolest thing Tommy Lee Jones does is ... nothing. Nothing, anyway, that Stanislavski could detect. (He never took an acting class. Didn't matter. Within weeks of graduating from Harvard, he landed a role in a Broadway play.) Jones just puts that rugged, West Texas face on the screen and observes the world with a rattlesnake's poise. He does watching a whole lot better...
...buried in a pauper's grave in Vienna's St. Marx Cemetery. Another unproven legend, given widespread credence thanks to the hit movie Amadeus, depicts him as the victim of his jealous court rival Antonio Salieri. Fervent admirers have argued that he was divinely inspired, but some modern psychologists detect an infantile-regressive personality. And if he were alive today, says Herbert Brugger of the Salzburg tourism office, he would be "a pop star - somewhere between Prince, Michael Jackson and Robbie Williams." There's little new about such typecasting. But over the past decade, Mozart has increasingly been placed...
...Until now, string theorists have accounted for the fact that we can detect only three dimensions by claiming that the extra dimensions are curled up into infinitesimal loops and thus imperceptible...