Word: earths
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Astronomers used to think that only good-sized meteorites reach the earth intact, while the smaller ones "burn" to vapor on passing through the atmosphere. But Dr. H. E. Landsberg at the U.S. Weather Bureau had another idea. He smeared some microscope slides with glycerin and exposed them on a mountaintop just before a shower of "Giacobinid" meteors* was expected. Before and during the shower, he caught nothing unusual. But for many days after the shower he caught highly magnetic particles unlike anything found in normal dust-catches...
Whipple urged his listeners to keep on the lookout for micro-meteorites. Large meteorites that hit the earth as flaming "fireballs" are believed to be part of the solar system. A few of the micro-meteorites floating gently down, said Whipple, may be the only specimens available of "interstellar solids." Geologists should look for micro-meteorites, Whipple said, in places like the Cretaceous chalk beds. Many astronomers believe that a planet blew up fairly recently; if so, there ought to be strata rich in its micrometeorite fragments to date the explosion...
...EARTH ABIDES (373 pp.)-George R. Sfewart-Random House...
...before him. "Are you happy?" he quavers. "Things are as they are," the savage replies in puzzlement, "and I am part of them." The Last American passes his scepter to the savage, and dies, murmuring with the grasses and the winds and with Ecclesiastes: "Men go and come, but earth abides...
...outset of his career and bought a second-hand rich boy's suit from Max Keezer that he were for years as alderman and mayor. Now, you see him mostly in a cutaway; supposedly he once showed up in a tuxedo to shovel the first clod of earth for a foundation, complaining that he hadn't hat time to change his clothes after a formal luncheon...