Word: martian
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This dramatic scenario is no longer confined to the daydreams of imaginative exobiologists.* Last week technicians at TRW Inc. in Redondo Beach, Calif., were finishing two miniaturized laboratories that will be able to test Martian soil for evidence of life. Next August, in the climax to NASA'S $1 billion Project Viking, two unmanned spacecraft will be fired aloft from Cape Canaveral. After an eleven-month journey, the Viking ships will swing into orbit around Mars. Each will release a lander containing a life-seeking laboratory. After descending with the aid of parachute and braking rockets, the first sterilized...
...test, a small sample of Martian soil will be partially submerged in a nutrient-rich solution (called "chicken soup" by the experimenters). If any Martian organisms grow in the broth and give off carbon dioxide or other common byproducts of respiration-like life processes, instruments will detect these chemicals. In another test, soil will be exposed to a nutrient containing radioactive carbon 14. If any microorganisms consume the nutrient and give off carbon-bearing gases as metabolic wastes, those wastes will be radioactively "tagged" and readily identified. Lastly, a Martian soil sample will be exposed to xenon "sunlight...
...Richard Nixon, in a negative way, has been a great teacher. He has demonstrated how dangerous it is to hand over our freedom to a strong presidency. By searching for new leadership, are we admitting our fear of freedom? It would be the finest achievement of civilization if a Martian were to descend and say, "Take me to your leader," and each of us could answer, "You're looking...
...those things you don't know you need until you don't have it." In the U.S. and round the world, there is a sense of diminished vision, of global problems that are overwhelming the capacity of leaders. As Journalist Brock Brower wrote three years ago, if Martian spacemen were to descend and demand, "Take me to your leader," the earthlings would not know where to direct them...
Died. Pamela Britton, 50, comely golden-haired actress who made a creditable maiden voyage as Frank Sinatra's girl friend in Anchors Aweigh (1945), starred in Broadway's Brigadoon (1947), and later adorned TV screens in Blondie and My Favorite Martian; of cancer; in Arlington Heights...