Word: planet
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...against the dark void of space earned inventor-scientist James Lovelock the first adherents to a theory that appears to reconcile science and religion in the study of life on earth. Lovelock's idea, named the Gaia hypothesis after the ancient earth goddess of the Greeks, is that the planet is alive and functions as a superorganism in which living things interact with geophysical and chemical processes to maintain conditions suitable for life...
Lovelock originally thought that some purposeful design organized living things to stabilize the atmosphere and climate. Now he and Margulis believe this regulation is achieved through the simple mechanism of feedback. For instance, in a hypothetical scenario, Lovelock shows that a planet covered simply by light- and dark-colored daisies could control the sun's heat. In this self-regulating model, dark daisies would absorb sunlight and warm the planet, until it became too warm for the dark daisies and instead favored the proliferation of light-reflecting daisies. That would have the effect of cooling the planet until the cycle...
...those who were on another planet last year, here is trip through the 1988-'89 championship season...
...when he gave his "I am an environmentalist" speech in the hot summer of 1988. But unless he has more to show on the greenhouse effect than rhetoric, the President should be mopping his brow anyway -- at least in embarrassment, and perhaps in anxiety for the future of the planet...
Slash TV? Not quite. But horror, fantasy and science fiction have invaded the medium with a vengeance. The NBC series Quantum Leap involves time travel, and Fox's new Alien Nation postulates a Los Angeles of the future, where people from another planet are trying to integrate into American society. Cable is going for classy shocks in such series as Shelley Duvall's Nightmare Classics on Showtime and HBO's Tales from the Crypt, adapted from the old E.C. horror comics and directed by such notables as Walter Hill (48 HRS.) and Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future...