Word: planeters
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...like a bunch of firecrackers. Last week, when Hearst newsmen discovered that two brave young German scientists plan shortly to try to crack an atom and convert it into radiation, the doomsday story was given another twirl. "A colossal catastrophe might ensue," declared the New York American. "Will this planet, twirling peacefully a million years,* be blown to smithereens...
Only 17 mi. in diameter, Eros is one of the smallest members of the large family of minor planets which number over 1,000. Almost all the group follow orbits between Mars and Jupiter. Eros, however, does not travel in a conventional asteroid path, wanders sometimes between Mars and Jupiter, sometimes between Mars and Earth. Discovered in 1898 by Dr. Gustav Witt at the Urania Observatory in Berlin, the small planet was given a masculine name because of its eccentric orbit. According to astronomical custom, only asteroids which move in an ordinary orbit are given feminine names. The cycle...
...suggested that a temperature difference between the sun's poles and equator might be the cause of the solar cyclones. Most probably, he said, the polar regions were warmer than the equatorial regions. Having given out an idea for Mt. Wilson astronomers to ponder, he peered at tiny Planet Eros through the Mt. Wilson telescope (see above), went to Los Angeles as guest of Cinemactor Charles Chaplin to see the opening of City Lights...
Four men who hope some day to flit from planet to planet in rocket planes were last week making preparations to leave the earth. Inventor Maurice Poirer of Burbank, Calif., fired a miniature moon-plane from the top of a mountain, watched it crash to the bottom of San Francisquito Canyon. In Italy a 132-lb. rocket designed by another U. S. rocketeer, Dr. Darwin O. Lyon, exploded, seriously injured four mechanics. In Vienna, the Meteorological Institute of Urania heard Professor Hermann Oberth tell how he hoped to reach Mars or Jupiter within 15 years. In Manhattan the Interplanetary Society...
...Inventors Poirer, Lyon, Oberth and Esnault-Pelterie had had their rocket planes in readiness last week, they might have reached a planet with a short jaunt of only 16 million miles. The tiny asteroid Eros passed closer to the earth than any other body except the moon and an occasional comet ever comes. Men could see it with strong binoculars, scrutinize it with telescopes...