Word: planet
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...near approach of Mars last summer was a sad disappointment to astronomers. A dust storm that veiled the planet's disk foiled the fanciest apparatus. But last week's meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific at Flagstaff, Ariz, heard a few bits of Martian news that had shown through the dust curtain...
Another "observation" of Martian life needed no telescope. Dr. Hubertus Strughold, chief of the Air Force's Department of Space Medicine, wrote a book a few years ago about Mars as an environment for living organisms (The Green and Red Planet, TIME, Aug. 24, 1953). His general conclusion was that the Martian climate is not too tough for some sort of hardy life. He suggested that this be proved by setting up a "Mars chamber," where rugged terrestrial organisms could be subjected to Martian conditions...
...that time, the distinguished University astronomer predicted a trans-Neptunian planet from perturbations he had noted in the orbits of Neptune and Uranus. Working from Lowell's reckonings, Clyde W. Tombaugh in 1930 discovered Pluto...
However, a theory recently proposed by Gerard P. Kuiper of the Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago, and strongly supported at last week's meeting by Eugene R. Rabe of the Cincinnati Observatory, indicates that Pluto may be actually only a runaway satellite of the neighboring planet Neptune...
Robe, a prominent celestial mathematician, noted that Pluto rides on orbit that fits the orbit a runaway planet would take...