Word: planet
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...absurd to suggest that dinosaurs would soon inherit the earth. At the time, they were inconsequential creatures, perhaps the size of dogs, living among far more imposing giant crocodiles and other reptiles. During Triassic times, the continents were stuck together in a single mass that scientists call Pangaea. The planet was warmer and rainier than it is today -- ideal conditions for the growth of vast forests along coastlines and adjacent to rivers. Conifers, horsetails, tree ferns and ginkgos were the dominant vegetation. Giant 3-ft. dragonflies whirred through the air, and 18-in. cockroaches scuttled along the forest floor...
...fiery, Jupiter-bright object that flashed across moonlit skies from Florida to New York early last Thursday morning was neither star nor planet nor UFO. It was the space shuttle Discovery putting on a spectacular light show on its way into orbit for eight days of atmospheric research. The successful -- at last! -- launch was a big relief for NASA. Two days earlier, Discovery's countdown was halted 11 seconds before lift-off because of a faulty computer circuit. Two weeks before that miscue, a mission by sister shuttle Columbia was scrubbed just three seconds before launch, after a valve...
...They're serious," he says of the astrology customers. "They talk astrology to each other.... People call and ask how long a certain planet is going to be in retrograde...
...original science of astrology was based on the rotation of the sun around the earth, Newman says. The sun was supposed to travel an elliptic path around the planet, and the zodiac is simply a band along that elliptic divided into 12 parts. The zones at that time were named for the 12 different constellations in the zodiac...
...evidence suggests that earthquakes are incremental steps in the movement of the 20 or so lithospheric plates that make up the planet's crust. It takes about 50,000 major jolts to nudge a plate 100 miles. Eldridge Moores, the geologist who guides McPhee, believes California was formed when a 2,000- mile-long arc of land parked against North America 250 million years...