Word: earthâ
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Thanks for the reminder that earth??is but a small grain of sand on the beach when compared with the size of the known universe. I don't think people give much thought to how insignificant we are in that respect. I was intrigued by the scientific community's fascinating discoveries of what happened after the Big Bang. I'm staying tuned...
...when millions watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center on live TV, a mine collapse is horrifying for the opposite reason: we see nothing and hear nothing. A group of men is either alive or dead and?in this age of GPS locators, instant messaging and Google Earth???thousands of feet of antediluvian rock stand between us and knowing their fate...
...sands. Few of the celebrated French engineers De Lesseps invited to inspect his plan approved it (among the doubters: Gustave Eiffel, the tower builder). The doubts were soon borne out: in 1889, De Lesseps' company went bankrupt. By that time, the French had moved 50 million cubic meters of earth???two-thirds of the amount moved at Suez. In the process, some 20,000 workers died of malaria and yellow fever (whose causes were thought to be noxious jungle vapors and immoral living rather than bacteria-carrying mosquitoes). Originally known as "the Great Frenchman," De Lesseps came to be called...
...into dust, and all life shall be on the very last verge of extinction on this globe; then, on a bit of lichen ... shall be seated a tiny insect, preening its antennae in the glow of the worn-out sun, representing the sole survival of animal life on this earth???a melancholy 'bug.' " By then, of course, man may have moved on to other worlds, friendlier solar systems. But the stowaways will have gone along...
...followers thought otherwise. Although he prudently did not publish his epic work On the Revolution of Heavenly Bodies until he lay on his deathbed, Copernicus dealt the earth-centered universe of Ptolemy its final blow. After years of observations, he concluded it was the sun?and not the earth???that occupied center stage; the earth, he said, was simply one of several planets that spun around the parent sun. A zealous disciple, the Dominican monk Giordano Bruno, added an even more shattering idea. "Innumerable suns exist," proclaimed Bruno. "Innumerable earths revolve about these suns in a manner similar...