Word: meteorically
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Three University astronomers announced to a Nashville, Tenn., astronomical meeting that they have discovered a new variety of meteor shower...
...Board of Geographic Names calls it "Meteor Crater" Airliners fly over it to show it to passengers, and the tourists it draws nourish a woebegone part of arid Arizona...
...science cannot let well enough alone. In the Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Geologist Dorsey Hager attempts to prove that Meteor Crater is nothing but an ancient sinkhole that just happened to get peppered, late in its life, by a swarm of meteorites. According to Hager, Meteor Crater started as a steep-sided dome thrust upward several million years ago by geological forces. Its rock was splintered by distortion, and water penetrated to "evaporite" (salt) beds far below it. After millions of years, the water removed a lot of this soluble stuff, leaving enormous caverns. At last...
...Duxford R.A.F. field near Cambridge, the R.A.F. brass gathered to show off Britain's jet air power. Noting cloud formations (at 1,200 ft.) in the sky, Tito suggested that the demonstration be canceled, but his hosts insisted. Minutes later two Meteor Mark 8s collided during an acrobatic show and crashed, killing both pilots, while Tito looked on in horror. (On his way to England, four other Britons had been killed during a 60-plane "flyover" staged at Gibraltar.) Tito, visibly upset, asked the British to cancel the rest of the show. They refused. But before it was over...
...toward the atmosphere. In its outer fringes, 50 miles up, air resistance heats the rocket's skin and wings to a brightly glowing red (1,300° F.), but the crew, protected by insulation and liquid-cooled windows, do not feel the heat. The ship glides on, part meteor, part airplane. Gradually its energy is dissipated; it spirals down, slows to subsonic speed and lands at its base, says Von Braun, at an easy 65 m.p.h. The crewmen step out for a Coke at the space pilots' club while their ship cools off and is made ready...