Word: earthly
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Adam and Eve started [populating] about 4,000 B.C. and had been reasonably fertile, if we had had a 10% increase per generation, we would now have-unless my slide rule slipped-a population as densely packed as this auditorium, leaving out the aisles. It would cover the entire earth, deserts and oceans 15 layers deep...
...other. Every time the head reached another daughter, a New Year began. Since the angry god's head was red-hot, it had to be cooled by water. Now, while the Burmese symbolically repeat the old ceremony, the victorious god is believed to come to earth to look things over...
Most meteorologists believe that the weather is a product of the workings of the earth's atmospheric temperatures and pressures and its rotation. Abbot, while head of the Smithsonian Institution's -As-trophysical Observatory (1906-27) and then as the institution's secretary, got the idea that the weather on earth also reflects what is happening on the sun. Since his retirement in 1944, he has worked as a research associate in an eleventh-floor retreat in the Smithsonian's 102-year-old tower, which was reclaimed from bats and owls to give him working quarters...
...Theories. Looking down with a kind of tolerant detachment on U.S. Weather Bureau headquarters, Dr. Abbot has been working on two theories. The first: the earth's precipitation is related to the rotation of the sun. This theory is still in its infancy. His other theory, which Abbot considers just about full-grown: temperature variations (from the average, on given dates) are related to another specific solar cycle. Almost once every week (every 6.6456 days, to be exact), Abbot believes, the amount of heat and light radiated by the sun builds up to a maximum; then it declines...
Purpose of the new professorship is the "study and teaching of history and geography of the sea and ocean areas of the earth and their affect on commerce, communication, and the spread of culture." Emphasis will be placed on the study of security and progress of the United States in view of the mid-oceanic and insular position of North America relative to other lands...