Word: graduality
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...German researchers have no idea exactly when Sirius B collapsed into the white-dwarf stage and no longer obscured Sirius A's white light. Depending on the original mass of Sirius B, the star's transformation could have ranged from a gradual shrinkage to a sudden collapse that resulted in a gigantic explosion that blew much of its stellar matter into space...
...change was gradual, the researchers admit, it took a remarkably short time for Sirius B to become a white dwarf. In fact, most astronomers think a red giant takes at least 100,000 years to reach that stage. If the change was violent and abrupt, they say, "no traces of catastrophic effects connected with such an event have been found." Those traces, according to widely accepted astrophysical theory, would include an expanding cloud of glowing gas still visible from the earth. Finally, the brilliance of Sirius B's explosion would certainly have lasted for weeks or months and provided...
There was no such progress in other familiar trouble spots. South Africa was torn by unremitting violence as blacks demanded abolition of apartheid and whites were willing to accept only gradual change. Guerrilla wars in Central America raged unchecked, and the so-called peace process in the Middle East made no discernible headway. Nature joined politics in contributing to human misery as earthquakes in Mexico City, a volcano eruption in Colombia and a cyclone in Bangladesh claimed tens of thousands of victims. In the U.S., Reagan became the first President to confer the full powers of his office voluntarily...
...It’s not uncommon for people who take on a deanship for the first time to come to a gradual sense that this may not be exactly what they most want to do, and I think that’s what happened,” Kegan said...
While administrators once hoped to begin voting on how to revamp Harvard College’s curriculum by this spring, a variety of setbacks—including the controversy surrounding embattled University President Lawrence H. Summers—has resulted in a year of only gradual progress, leading to dozens of revised recommendations, but no votes and little time for Faculty discussion...