Word: planetful
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There are moments in space exploration when fact and fantasy intertwine. The Mars Phoenix Lander, the latest of NASA's robotic fleet, demonstrated that after touching down in -58 F temperatures (-50 C) near the planet's north pole on May 25 at 7:38 p.m. EST. Television broadcasts relayed jubilant fist-pumps inside the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's mission control room in California along with initial images of the spacecraft's frigid new home. But a couple of blocks from the lab, two young boys riding bicycles had a more fanciful perspective. "The spaceship landed where Frosty lives...
Mars, as scientists now know, was once a very wet planet, running with rivers and teeming with oceans and seas much like the Earth. But its low gravity and thin atmosphere allowed most of that water to vanish into space. What was left retreated into the subsoil or, significantly, contracted into the poles. Phoenix, a stationary lander in the style of the old Viking ships that touched down on the planet in 1976, will get a chance to dig into that frozen polar rind...
...best tourist attractions in Burma's new capital. That's no surprise, really. Naypyidaw--the name translates as "Abode of Kings"--was built from scratch just three years ago on orders from the ruling junta. The vast swath of former scrubland didn't even exist when the latest Lonely Planet Burma travel guide was written, and there's not much tourist charm in a dusty bunker town whose sole purpose is the wish fulfillment of paranoid generals...
...multicountry project to study the albedo effect, the amount of sunlight that reflects off Earth's surface. Scientists are gathering data to raise awareness of how the whiteness of the polar ice caps, currently shrinking because of global warming, helps deflect heat from the sun and keep the planet cool...
...line Dion from singing, and award the the Legion of Honor to people who listened to her and survived," suggests Porte - who was hardly alone in decrying Dion's selection as the most egregious example to date of the institution confusing fame with substance. "Has she saved the planet? Found a cure for AIDS? Legalized adoption for gay parents?" asked the weekly magazine Marianne. "Not at all, she represents success." Pinning the decoration on schlock goddess Dion, warned daily France Soir, risked "transforming it into a chocolate medal...