Word: martian
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Many a scientist's fond hope that there was life on Mars was dashed in 1963 when spectrographic studies revealed that the Martian atmosphere is as much as 50 times thinner than the earth's. It seemed almost certain that a relatively weak Martian gravity had allowed most of the planet's primitive atmosphere to leak off into space. There appeared to be practically no possibility that any of the lightest element, hydrogen, or its compounds, had remained long enough to play their essential role in the early evolution of life. Now it appears that such pessimism...
...your method of reading a comic book doesn't include careful analysis of the artwork, The Spirit is also funny and well-written. In the current issue, Denny Cok encounters a blonde named Lorelei who lures truck-drivers to their doom, and a Martian bank-teller named Miss Cosmek, who doesn't want to leave Earth. The next issue promises a run-in between The Spirit and a Parisian temptress who calls herself Plaster of Paris...
...vaudeville shows go, it might have been conjured up by Ed Sullivan on an LSD binge. Right there onstage in living, quivering color, a formation of UFOs performed an aerial ballet. A chap in fluorescent lemon leotards wrestled with a space-age cobweb. Next came a drill team of Martian types outfitted with glowing lampshades, then seven creatures in baggy sacks who squiggled like giant amoebas in heat-all to the otherworldly twaaang, ratatatat, whizzz and kapow! of electronic music. It was called Vaudeville of the Elements, Choreographer Alwin Nikolais' latest excursion into the twilight zones of modern dance...
...Holy Week "miracle." For Palomaresinos, the splash-out meant a return to workaday chores that will always be colored by the phantasmagoria that ensued after a bomb-laden SAC B-52 collided with a jet tanker in their skies last Jan. 17. Ever since, hundreds of airmen, many in Martian masks and protective clothing, had scoured the countryside collecting the remains of the three bombs (two burst open on impact) that fell on land. Air Force generals even helped gather more than 1,600 tons of slightly contaminated topsoil* for burial in the nuclear-waste plot of Aiken...
Tombaugh believes that the canals are faults or fractures, several miles wide, in the Martian crust. Their darkening and fading may be caused, he says, by the intermittent escape of hot gases that melt a thin layer of frost and vegetation. The oases where the faults intersect, he speculates, are probably impact craters where moisture gathers and promotes the growth of moss or lichenlike plants hardy enough to withstand the harsh Martian climate...