Word: meteors
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Most meteors are small, pea-size to walnut-size things that get their brilliance from their enormous speed. Only a few are big enough to reach the earth's surface before they evaporate. Once in a great while, a really big meteor smacks the earth with a vast concussion, digging an "explosion crater" like the one near Canyon Diablo, Ariz. Such craters are rare. Unless the meteor hits in an arid region, its dent is smoothed down quickly (in terms of geological time) by erosion and other natural forces...
...latest Sky and Telescope magazine described a great meteor crater recently identified at Wolf Creek in the dry wilderness 400 miles inland from Broome, Western Australia. From ground level the crater is not impressive. Its rim looks like a low, rocky ridge above a featureless plain. Apparently the few who have passed near it hardly ever gave it a second glance...
...Reeves and N. B. Sauve of the Vacuum Oil Co., spotted the crater from an airplane. What they saw was a circular depression more than half a mile across and 100 ft. deep, with a splashed-out looking rim. In general appearance it looked much like Arizona's meteor crater (570 ft. deep, four-fifths of a mile in diameter...
...Harvard meteor authority Fred L. Whipple, associate professor of Astronomy and Chairman of the Astronomy Department, has been awarded the Smith Prize by the National Academy of Science, the College Observatory announced Thursday...
Among Whipple's contributions are studies of the variations of temperatures according to altitude, the mapping of meteor orbits and the investigation of meteor through photography and radio echoes...