Word: magellans
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...landmark movements that have shaped the modern era -- from the ocean voyages of Columbus and Magellan to the Protestant Reformation and the print revolution, from the development of the scientific method to the Industrial Revolution -- were largely produced by those hated demons of American multiculturalists, dead white European males. Until 1400, all but a handful of innovations in European life had been anticipated by the Arabs or the Chinese. After 1600, virtually every technological change that affected the world and the way people lived -- from the telescope to the typewriter, from the fork to the steam engine -- has been...
...SPACE Magellan unveils the volcanic fury of Venus...
...most stunning image is of Venus' second tallest mountain, Maat Mons, which rises 8 km (5 miles). Most of the planet's many peaks, including 9.5-km- (6-mile-) high Maxwell Montes, look bright in the radar pictures Magellan takes from its orbit above the perpetual cloud cover. That means they are strong reflectors of radar waves. But Maat Mons is dark; like the Stealth bomber, it absorbs much of the radar falling...
...remarkably free of craters. That would be easy to explain on a planet like Earth, where cratering from meteor strikes is erased by steady erosion. But while there is some evidence of wind erosion on Venus, the best explanation for the lack of cratering is periodic lava flows. Magellan has found direct evidence of such flows, including domelike upwellings and hardened streams of rock trailing down the sides of Venusian peaks. There are also signs of other geologic activity, including dramatic faulting and several distinct episodes of mountain building. But until last week the evidence didn't indicate whether...
While NASA studied Magellan's images, another space explorer made history last week. Moving out beyond Mars, Galileo became the first spacecraft to have a close encounter with an asteroid. But pictures of the mysterious planetary fragment, called Gaspra, are unavailable because Galileo's main antenna for sending out images is frozen in the wrong position. Not until 1992, when Galileo swings back by Earth, can smaller antennas on the craft successfully transmit the missing pictures. The frustrating delay makes scientists all the more grateful for Magellan's reliable -- and revealing -- signals from Venus...