Word: marsden
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...theology. But while compulsory chapel attendance may have already become ancient history, Harvard wasn’t abandoning God just yet. In fact, one could regard the ostensible secularization of the late 19th century as more an affirmation of Christianity than an unequivocal rejection of religion. As George M. Marsden writes in “The Soul of the American University,” the shift was not occurring “in the name of an attack on Christianity but under the banner of its expansion.” In effect, he writes, whatever Harvard did simply was Christian...
...that there is no precise scientific definition of the word planet. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) is trying to hammer one out, but the decision is proving more difficult than anyone thought. An apparent consensus, reached just weeks ago, seems to have fallen apart. "The current state," admits Brian Marsden, director of the IAU's Minor Planet Center at Harvard, "is rather confusing...
...door even wider. By his definition, any object massive enough for gravity to squeeze into a spherical shape is a planet--unless the object orbits a bigger planet, of course. Otherwise, dozens of moons would have to be reclassified as planets. "Defining planets by size is purely arbitrary," agrees Marsden, who likes Stern's idea. "The Pluto-crats want to cut things off there, but it's absurd to say that an object 2,000 km across is a planet and one 1,999 km across...
...latter made headlines when it was formally announced to the world by Spanish astronomers who, according to Brown, knew where to look because they had used the Internet to tap into his telescope logs (the Spaniards deny the charge). At least five or six asteroids would also qualify, says Marsden. There would probably be two dozen newly designated planets...
...about coal - of which the country has enough, experts say, to match the output of 50 Maui gas fields? When dwindling gas flows forced the country's largest power station, at Huntly, to switch to coal last year, there were noisy protests. Once the old station at Marsden Point is modernized, it will be the cleanest coal-fired plant in Australasia, says its owner, Mighty River Power. But that doesn't impress critics, who say getting electricity from coal is a betrayal of New Zealand's Kyoto Protocol obligations. "It's a backward step for us to start using coal...