Word: explainer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...shows' viewer appeal is simple: they're family-friendly, good-natured and easy to play along with. Harder to explain is what draws the parade of contestants to screech, warble and croak in front of millions, without the aid of melon-ball shooters. Is it all for the money? Isn't it humiliating...
What they can't explain is a discovery announced a few days ago by Lawrence Rudnick, an astronomer at the University of Minnesota. He and a couple of colleagues have found what they think is another void in space - but at about a billion light-years across (that's 6 billion trillion miles, give or take), it's many times bigger than any void ever seen. It's so big, in fact, that if it's really there, it could cause real problems for all current models of the universe; the 14 or so billion years since the Big Bang...
That could hardly be a coincidence, Rudnick thought, and the simplest solution was a great void in space. That would explain why there weren't many radio galaxies in that part of the sky. And microwaves crossing a huge void would lose some of their energy, in a complex process involving the reduced gravity inside. The exciting part is that the void is so huge that current theory simply can't explain it - and astronomers just love this kind of challenge...
...ALEXIA SALVATIERRA, quoting a 2nd century Christian theologian to explain why activist Elvira Arellano's Aug. 20 deportation to Tijuana would inspire a renewed fight for immigration reform. Arellano had found sanctuary in a Chicago church for a year in defiance of a deportation order...
...ride out union protests against controversial measures being prepared. Meanwhile, the media savvy Sarkozy knows from his first 100 days (not to mention his mega-hyped vacation) that the French public can't get enough coverage of its young, modern leader - a fascination he'll doubtless exploit to fully explain and sell reform he expects to provoke resistance. Should such exposure allow Sarkozy to push through reform that French governments have backed away from for over a decade, he'll doubtless consider any unflattering flab of his own exposed in that process as a price worth paying to move France...