Word: planetful
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Moon come to be? Prevailing wisdom has it that 4.5 billion years ago, a collision between the Earth and an object larger than Mars tossed immense quantities of vapor and debris into orbit around our planet. Eventually, the gas and rock formed a disk of dust which cooled and clumped together to form the moon. That theory received a major boost Thursday thanks to a study published in the journal Nature. Using computer simulations, University of Colorado scientists showed how a single moon can grow in this fashion. The researchers conducted 27 simulations which tracked up to 2,700 objects...
Just getting to the Red Planet was a signal accomplishment for Surveyor. Launching a spacecraft from Earth to Mars, says NASA, is like firing a baseball from California to New York and hitting a particular window in the Empire State Building. Having managed this navigational tour de force, Surveyor then had to enter Mars orbit--a maneuver that carried its own risks...
...time being, Surveyor won't do much at Mars but orbit. The ship's path around the planet is elliptical, with a low point of 155 miles and a high point of 35,000. Each time Surveyor barnstorms Mars on its close approach, however, it drags a solar panel through the atmosphere in a process called aerobraking. A few months of this cosmic paddling will refine the orbit so that by early next year, the ship will inscribe a near perfect 235-mile circle. Then it will switch on its instruments...
When it does, it will find a lot to study. While satellites usually travel horizontally around a planet's equator, Surveyor orbits vertically, flying over both Martian poles. If there is organic chemistry on Mars, it will probably be in a wet, carbon-rich region, and the ice caps--made largely of water and carbon dioxide--fill that bill nicely...
Soros' perspective from high atop Cash Mountain affords him a spectacular view for his societal vision. The irony is that the capitalist society that enabled him to accumulate such a disproportionate share of this planet's wealth is the root of the problem. If Soros wishes to identify the difficulties facing humanity, perhaps he ought to look in a mirror. PAUL AZZARIO Southampton, Bermuda...