Word: planetful
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...mass, may travel at the speed of light and are virtually impossible to detect. According to the standard theories of physics, these exotic particles are produced by various nuclear reactions. Quadrillions of neutrinos from the sun bombard the earth every second, yet most of them pass right through the planet without causing so much as a ripple...
...television camera closes in on his solemn face, film director Oliver Stone instructs viewers to hold their breath. "Every instinct will start to shout and scream for air," says Stone, comparing the feeling to the "choking of the planet" from global-warming gases. "O.K., breathe," he commands seconds later. "Remember, you just ran out of air. And we're running out of time...
...also of a nine- tongued, multisovereign, historically riven Europe into that remarkable new creature, the European Community. (To say nothing of the joining of the two Yemens this May.) Integrationists point to the E.C. as the wave of the future, the only hope for peace and prosperity on a planet already suffering from a surfeit of sovereignty. Self-styled realists like Margaret Thatcher, however, scoff at the notion of multinational union as rank Utopianism, a dangerous deviation from the natural human condition of group homogeneity and ethnic sovereignty...
...space. There is a danger, though, that such machines could multiply uncontrollably, like the viruses that have disrupted computer networks. Doyne Farmer, a physicist at the Los Alamos lab, points to a cautionary science- fiction tale by Stanislaw Lem. In Lem's Fiasco, space explorers discover a Saturn-like planet with a ring around it. On closer inspection, the ring turns out to be a swarm of attack satellites and killer robots, part of a "star wars" defense shield that had reproduced itself over and over again. Artificial life, says Farmer, could turn out to be man's most beautiful...
...sharp contrast to the almost uninterrupted acclaim heaped on the agency in the years that followed its establishment in 1958. With virtually unlimited funds, sound management and inspired creativity, NASA soon overcame the Soviet Union's head start, sending brilliantly conceived and increasingly sophisticated unmanned craft to every planet but Pluto and landing men on the moon...