Word: nucleus
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That's a recurring theme. U.S. officials say Taliban units are led by a few wizened commanders, such as Hannan, who operate in the mountains they know well enough to walk blindfolded. The commanders, the U.S. says, maintain a nucleus of 10 veteran fighters and bombmaking experts plus dozens of fresh recruits, usually teenagers from local villages and radical madrasahs, or seminaries, in nearby Pakistan. The commanders' effectiveness determines how much money and how many guns and new jihadis are doled out to them by the Taliban's secretive, 10-man military council, whose members move back and forth across...
...control center in Darmstadt, West Germany, became palpable. Images of the cornet, relayed to the center at intervals of four seconds, loomed larger and larger on television screens, finally yielding by far the best look yet at an elongated shape near Halley's heart. It was the comet's nucleus. Giotto Investigator Wolfgang Schmidt, giving a play-by-play description of the images, could not contain his excitement. "It's obvious that there is structure on this nucleus," he exclaimed. "Mountains, hills, craters--incredible detail!" Suddenly the image froze and then, only two seconds before the spacecraft's closest approach...
...international Giotto team, it seemed, had been realized. Fully aware of the dangers of meeting any outsize dust particles at the tremendous speed of encounter but determined to get a closeup look, the scientists had aimed the spacecraft to swoop only 338 miles from Halley's dust-shrouded nucleus. That, according to Roger Bonnet, ESA's director of scientific programs, was like playing Russian roulette: "You may survive, but one shot will kill...
Although scientists will be interpreting Giotto's data for months to come, Horst Keller, principal investigator of the camera team, announced some preliminary results. Halley's nucleus appeared to be 9.4 miles long and at least 2.5 miles wide, he said, and the surface, "velvet black and very irregular, with an indentation in the middle, like a peanut or a potato." On one side of the nucleus were what appeared to resemble nozzles, spewing out one minor and two major jets of gas and dust. Keller was puzzled by the blackness of the nucleus, which suggested that there is little...
Giotto's grand finale was preceded by the flybys of the second Soviet Vega and two Japanese craft. Early in the week, Vega 2 passed 5,125 miles from the comet's nucleus, sending back 700 pictures and confirming that the nucleus was solid. But the dust clouds encountered by the craft disabled nearly half of its solar panels and two of its experiments...