Word: orbitals
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Side by side in orbit...
Side by side in orbit...
Where does the solar system end? At Pluto, most folks would reply. Or at Neptune, the cognoscenti might say, because thanks to Pluto's odd, egg-shaped orbit, the eighth planet has been outermost since 1979 and will be through 1998. But astronomers suspect that the sun's family actually extends far beyond either of these two planets. Out there in the frigid darkness beyond any known planet, they believe, lies the Kuiper belt, a ring of dusty ice chunks that surrounds the solar system. Beyond that, astronomers say, is the similarly composed Oort cloud, which forms a vast sphere...
...double standard. Western governments may, for example, demand that to qualify for aid an ex-communist country reduce its agricultural subsidies to a level well below the largesse that the West showers on its farmers. Worse, in order to keep their countries operating, democratic leaders in the old Soviet orbit have to rely on the army of apparatchiks who ran the communist system and who naturally resist reforms that would dilute their power...
Worries about the reliability of Russia's historic course change are valid. Huge Russian garrison armies continue to intimidate the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union seven months after the collapse of the old system. "The Russians are acting to keep these former republics in their orbit," a frustrated Azerbaijani diplomat complained in Washington two weeks ago. To the Moldovans, Latvians (and other Balts) and Georgians rattled by these "foreign" troops, it is little comfort that the unwelcome visitors are now Russian rather than Soviet...