Word: mile
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Well, not quite. Early last week, four days after Spahr spotted it, his celestial interloper whizzed by Earth, missing the planet by 280,000 miles--a hairbreadth in astronomical terms. Perhaps a third of a mile across, it was the largest object ever observed to pass that close to Earth...
...unique. Neighboring space teems with many more so-called Near Earth Objects, asteroids and comets with orbits that pass close to Earth's path around the sun. More than 100 NEOS big enough to cause the kind of worldwide disaster that wiped out the dinosaurs (six-tenths of a mile across or larger) have already been identified and charted. But Eleanor Helin, an astronomer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, notes that an estimated 2,000 more of these mountain-size hulks may be lurking undetected out there, to say nothing of a few hundred thousand smaller...
...Rocky Mountain West. In Colorado, where the rainbow is the mainstay of a $1 billion-a-year game-fishing industry, the disease has infected hatcheries, devastated trout on a prime stretch of the Colorado River and spilled into 13 of 15 major river drainages. On one 55-mile stretch of Montana's famous Madison River, an estimated half-million fish have been killed since 1990--including 90% of the fingerling rainbows--and the catch rate of adult rainbows has plummeted 75%. Warns Dick Vincent, a Montana state-fisheries manager: "On some rivers, we're looking at a real threat...
Unlike their Hollywood impersonators, real storm chasers try to watch tornadoes from a respectful distance, usually a mile or two, and their vehicles take a lot more punishment than they do. During last year's VORTEX run, for example, Davies-Jones and his partners were charged with the task of placing Turtles--canisters weighted with lead and packed with temperature and pressure gauges--in the path of an oncoming tornado. As it turned out, the twister swerved and missed the Turtles. But the softball-size hailstones that followed found their mark--smashing a windshield and a rear window. Another time...
...former CIA director. Daring World War II intelligence operative, controversial overseer of Vietnam-era covert activities, Colby was an ironic choice to restore the CIA's reputation in the post-Watergate era. Hopes that he will be found alive have dimmed since the discovery of his capsized canoe a mile from his Maryland home...