Word: giant
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...because it emits no discernible light. A sort of shadow with substance, dark matter dominates the universe, accounting for more than 90% of its total mass. Yet scientists, struggling to interpret just a few sparse clues, know virtually nothing about it. The dark matter could be made up of giant planets, failed stars, black holes, clouds of unknown particles, or even, so far as the laws of physics are concerned, bowling balls. "After all this time and all this effort," sighs Alcock, head of astrophysics at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, "we still don't know what most of the universe...
...about six weeks last year, the world became one giant megalopolis for photographer Anthony Suau. Assigned to shoot the pictures for this week's cover story on the many problems and opportunities to be found in megacities around the globe, Suau began in Kinshasa, Zaire, and wound up in New York City's South Bronx, by way of Mexico City; Sao Paulo and Curitiba, Brazil; and Tokyo. "I was shotgunning from one city to the next," recalls the 36-year- old native of Peoria, Illinois. "One street in Tokyo just blended into the next one in New York City...
...year, ozone pollution still worsened 22% between 1990 and 1991. Today the city is looking at electric cars and new pollution controls for buses and industry. The situation is desperate enough that the ordinarily sensible mayor, Manuel Camacho Solis, has entertained daffy ideas such as the installation of 100 giant fan complexes, each 13.3 hectares (33 acres) in size, to blow pollution out of the area...
...devastating 1923 earthquake today might cause worldwide economic stagnation as rebuilding the city soaked up hundreds of billions of dollars of Japanese capital. If global warming causes a sharp rise in sea levels during the next century, as many scientists predict, the coastal megacities may have to build giant dikes to prevent disastrous flooding, but only a few urban areas can afford such an undertaking...
...World Bank, which generally finances giant projects, increasingly supports small community-based initiatives. One such project is the Kampung Improvement Program in Jakarta. Its success grew out of a decision to give squatters title to plots of land. In return, the new landowners agreed to help build footpaths, improve drainage and reduce garbage. "Instead of thinking of themselves as temporary boarders, the poor began to look at their community as their home," says Josef Leitmann, a World Bank urban planner. "A simple change in psychology produced a change in physical surroundings...