Word: interstellar
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Science-fiction writers, stymied by the laws of physics, turn to such literary devices as time warps to make interstellar travel possible. Now women, physicians and population-control advocates, dismayed by most states' strictures against abortion, have developed a procedure that offers a similar semantic solution. In a growing number of clinics and doctors' offices, a technique called "menstrual extraction" is being used to terminate suspected pregnancies before conception has been confirmed. Therefore an abortion in fact is not an abortion officially...
...Cornell Astronomers Carl Sagan and Frank Drake, Pioneer's flight into interstellar space is not only a scientific adventure but a rare opportunity. Thus they persuaded NASA to attach a unique plaque to Pioneer's antenna supports. Its purpose: to indicate where the far-ranging robot came from and who its builders were should Pioneer ever be intercepted by extraterrestrial beings...
...years from now when and from where the spacecraft was launched. For specific details, they can look at a representation of the solar system (G). It shows that Pioneer left from the third planet from the sun (lower left), swept past the fifth (Jupiter) and then veered off into interstellar space...
...intervals, they playfully named the sources LGMs (for Little Green Men) on the chance that they had detected the beacon of an advanced civilization. The LGMs were later named pulsars and recently identified as natural phenomena: the long-sought neutron stars. Despite man's failure to pick up any interstellar communications, however, the entire galaxy could be filled with chatter between advanced civilizations, transmitted by a technique still undiscovered on earth. Says Carl Sagan: "We may be very much like the inhabitants of an isolated valley in New Guinea who communicate with villages in the next valley by drum...
Zero Gravity. As he circles above in the command ship, Roosa will also have his hands full with scientific chores -taking closeup photos of the moon, aiming his cameras at more distant astronomical targets, including interstellar dust clouds, and bouncing radar beams off the lunar surface to further determine its characteristics. On their voyage home, the astronauts will subject a number of terrestrial substances to the effects of zero gravity, including organic chemicals that are used in making vaccines. Such tests, scientists hope, may eventually lead to the production of vaccines in earth-orbiting labs; weightless conditions should facilitate...