Word: earthness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...days, while 200 NASA scientists and technicians photograph, weigh, catalogue, chip and even burn them. Particles of the samples will be tested on living cells, including those taken from fish and from a human cancer. Other particles will be fed to a variety of earth life, such as Japanese quail, algae, sunflowers, pine seedlings, oysters, white mice and cockroaches?the last chosen because they are one of the hardiest insects known to man, having survived as a distinct genus for millions of years. All the organisms involved were painstakingly bred and raised in germ-free conditions. The mice, for example...
Perhaps most intriguing is what the moon may reveal about the earth's murky infancy. The earth was formed some 4.5 billion years ago, but the slow, relentless process of its evolution wiped out all traces of its earliest years; the oldest known terrestrial rocks date back about 3.3 billion years. "What has happened during the missing 1.2 billion years?" wonders Astronomer Robert Jastrow, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. "We do not know; they are a blank page in the history of our planet. If the age of the rocks on the surface...
Some scientists are hoping that unexpected clues in Apollo's samples will lead to new and more satisfying theories about the moon's origin. Complains Astrophysicist Ralph Baldwin: "There is no existing theory that gives a satisfactory explanation of the earth-moon system as we know it." Nobel Laureate Chemist Harold Urey wryly notes that it would be easier to prove that the moon did not exist than to get agreement on how it came...
...used continuously; no clouds, air currents or air pollution can impede viewing. Were the giant, 200-in. optical telescope at Mt. Palomar to be duplicated on the lunar surface, for example, it could observe stars that are 10,000 times too faint for it to detect through the earth's atmosphere...
Because the moon rotates on its axis only about one-thirtieth as fast as the earth, stars move slowly across the lunar skies, making it easier to track and photograph them. Because lunar gravity is only one-sixth the earth's, structural distortions caused by the sheer weight of large telescope mirrors and their supports will be dramatically lessened. Some scientists have estimated that telescope mirrors as large as 2,000 in. in diameter (ten times the earth's largest) could be used effectively on the moon...