Word: half-billion
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...half-billion dollars is nothing. Nothing compared to what Harvard will get in return...
Even more intriguing is what this rock means for life. If Earth wasn't a seething ball of magma at the time, but cool enough for water, a crust and a biosphere, life might have arisen a half-billion years earlier than previously believed...
Paleontologists recognize six previous mass-extinction events during the past half-billion years (the number was until recently believed to be five, but now another, from early Cambrian times, has been added). The last and most famous, which occurred 65 million years ago and was caused by a giant meteorite strike off the present-day coast of Yucatan, ended the age of dinosaurs. These catastrophes followed a typical sequence. First, a large part of biodiversity was destroyed. There was a bloom of a small number of "disaster species," such as medleys of fungi and ferns, that survived and reproduced rapidly...
...plot revolves around Charlie Croker, an Atlanta real estate developer leading a luxurious life, complete with antebellum plantation and trophy wife. Croker is struggling, though, to escape the half-billion dollar debt he has accumulated through failed developments. Meanwhile, when a wealthy white family accuses a black football star of rape, Atlanta's latent racial tensions threaten to erupt chaotically to the surface. As opposing forces vie for Charlie's assets and his dignity, an unemployed California factory worker rides an almost supernatural tide of events into the heart of Atlanta, interjecting an unknown variable into the literary equation...
...most ferocious critics call it Harvard's half-billion dollar mistake, Milder types ask whether Harvard should be in the energy business. Some argue it is necessary, sensible and will pay for itself in time...