Word: orbital
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Marsden promptly posted Scotti's data on the Harvard Center's Website, making them available to other astronomers. In early March, those data and newer observations by two Japanese amateur astronomers and a Texas scientist were fed into the Harvard Center's number-crunching orbit predictor, which spat out the 30,000-mile "miss distance" that led Marsden to make his dramatic announcement...
...what really worries astronomers is the devil they don't know. While they estimate that perhaps as many as 2,000 asteroids larger than a kilometer (six-tenths of a mile) across either cross or come close to Earth's orbit, they have discovered and tracked fewer than 200 of them. "We simply don't know where the other objects are," says JPL astronomer Helin. "But the ones that have been discovered," she warns, "certainly suggest that we could someday face a surprise encounter with a large, unseen object." The significance of the kilometer size? An impact of anything that...
Almost as worrisome are the estimated 300,000 asteroids larger than 300 ft. wide that also come perilously near or intersect Earth's orbit; each could inflict Tunguska-like damage over a large region. The number of Earth-crossing asteroids larger than 60 ft. across, says University of Arizona astronomer Tom Gehrels, could be as high as 100 million. A hit by any one of them could destroy a large city...
...rhythms wash and flow into each other. This, however, is not a current of water but of electricity: the album is propelled by synthesized sounds, electronic drumbeats and artificial noises. Madonna is clearly borrowing heavily from cutting-edge electronica-tinged performers, including Goldie, Bjork and Aphex Twin. William Orbit, Madonna's collaborator on the CD (he co-wrote and co-produced nearly every track) says she might release a second CD featuring the songs that were too experimental to make the album. "It would be like the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," says Orbit, who has also worked with...
...confessional nature of many of the lyrics creates a tension, even a passion. The sound of a numb Madonna trying to reconnect to her own emotions has poignancy akin to the Tin Man searching for a heart, or Spock struggling to come to terms with his human half. Orbit says that one song, the coolly funky Swim, was recorded on the day Madonna learned of Gianni Versace's murder: "I think that explains why the track has an emotional resonance to it. It was intense to record...